The Pope and the refs

FIFA and the Vatican are very similar in how they deal with being caught doing something wrong. (Of course I'm not trying to suggest that the moral gravity of their respective wrongdoings is comparable, only that they deal with being exposed in a very similar fashion). First order of business in both organizations is to pretend nothing has happened. If that is no longer possible, they may admit to being wrong and sometimes even apologize, but never in a way that is of any use to the victims (FIFA never reverses bad referee calls; the church never pays damages unless forced to by the courts, and even then it tries to collect money for this purpose from churchgoers). They both blatantly refuse to consider any kind of institutional change that could prevent the wrongs from happening again (FIFA essentially says it will never introduce any type of during-the-game review of referee calls; the church essentially says it will never cooperate with law enforcement when it comes to sexual abuse investigations against priests). When the church internally punishes a priest for molesting children, and when FIFA punishes a ref for distorting the outcome of an important game, the punishment is usually more about removing the individual from positions of publicity rather than imposing any significant inconveniences on them; and neither FIFA nor the church admits out loud exactly what the individual is being punished for.

These similarities should not come as a surprise. Both FIFA and the church are effectively monopolies in their respective market niches, so it's no wonder that their customers have very little bargaining power. People may get angry with them, but somehow soccers fans boycotting the World Cup or Catholics boycotting Sunday mass has never been a real possibility.