Zürich: Football’s international governing body, The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), announced today they have secured the services of Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in an intergalactic effort to locate more teams for the World Cup. In a move that has led at least one journalist to check the style guide as it relates to acronyms, the formally corrupt federation plans to locate extraterrestrial lifeforms who also play football, or something similar.
The search outside our solar-system was sparked as FIFA debates how many teams should compete in future World Cups. The current plan under consideration would see 48 teams compete in 2022, 64 in 2026, 128 in 2030 and 256 in 2036. As there are only 195 countries on Earth (and intriguingly, 211 members of FIFA), this has presented a problem for officials eager to maximise revenue for the non-profit organisation.
Efforts to get Western Australia and Texas to secede from Australia and the United States of America respectively, have so far proved futile, as has the controversial effort to garner support for the halving of Montenegro, creating Earth’s newest nations, Monten and Egro.
FIFA has dismissed suggestions they will continue to double the number of teams indefinitely for the quadrennial festival of kicking, stating unequivocally the number will be capped at 1024, or 2048.
Although SETI has yet to officially make contact with intelligent lifeforms in other solar systems, a member of FIFA who wishes to remain anonymous has told The Dwarf the organisation is already in talks with a number of interstellar bipeds and quadrupeds, including humanoid frog-like creatures who use telekinesis to propel a dodecahedron roughly the size of a football along the ground in an effort to “grush tok supell” (score a goal).
The challenge of interstellar travel, the fact that humans do not and for the foreseeable future will not possess telekinesis, and the fact the name of the competition contains the word world, together with a long list of other logistical issues were scoffed at. “We moved the Cup to December after giving it to a host nation laughably unfit to host. This will severely disrupt domestic competitions for at least two years. Why did we move it? Because Qatar is hotter than the sun. It’s also so tiny it’s simply impossible for them to host all the games. Couple that with countless deaths of foreign workers indistinguishable from slaves building stadia to be filled with hundreds of thousands of fans eager to have a cold beer in a nation that prohibits alcohol. Look how quickly we bent the knee for that sweet sweet oil money. Now watch how quickly we do it for some of that sweet sweet cold fusion action. We’re FIFA, we do what we want.”