Reminds me of the joke I heard several times when I lived in Barcelona…
“El Barça, més que un club – Un puticlub!” 
(“Barça, more than a club – a whorehouse!”)
They do buy their best players. 
No obvious reasons spring to mind, other than wartime patriotic fervor, which hardly explains why the practice continues.
What, you don’t support Our Boys in Uniform (even if they’re baseball uniforms)?
The practice continues because nobody dares take the inevitable jingo backlash for stopping it.
It’s one of those things that have come and gone in the UK. Time was (starting, I suspect, in the First World War) a lot of public events, even local concerts and plays, started with the National Anthem. With continuous showings in cinemas, they used to play it only at the end of the last showing, usually over a film clip of the Queen looking rather grand on her horse. But the trouble with that was that people wanted to get off to the pub before closing time or to catch a bus home, so you had an embarrassing sort of steeplechase to get round the diehard patriots (always at the end of the row) standing to attention while everyone else tried to push past them. By all accounts this was already a problem in World War II, so no wonder they gave up on playing the anthem in 60s or thereabouts:
Near total sidetrack but those following the FIFA kerfluffle need to watch John Oliver’s take on it from last Sunday.
Linky please?
Doesn’t work in the UK I’m afraid.
When FIFA president Sepp Blatter abruptly resigned on Tuesday — just four days after winning re-election — the Twittersphere had the same, immediate reaction:
John Oliver now has to drink a Bud Light Lime.
On last Sunday’s episode of his HBO show, “Last Week Tonight,” Oliver — who eviscerated the “comically grotesque” soccer governing body during last June’s World Cup — responded to the arrest of several top FIFA officials on corruption charges by urging sponsors to pull their support.
If Blatter was forced out, Oliver said, he vowed to drink a Bud Light Lime (Budweiser is a FIFA sponsor), a beer the British-born comedian generously said tastes like “a puddle beneath a Long John Silver’s Dumpster.”
Two days later, the previously defiant Blatter stepped down after 17 years helming FIFA — representing another victory for “Last Week Tonight,” which in a little over a year has built a reputation as essential viewing for its incisive wit and long-form, heavily-researched investigative pieces.
“What they’re doing at ‘Last Week Tonight’ is really going the next step in showing how influential comedy can be,” says Bill Adair, professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University.
“By devoting the bulk of the show to one segment and really going in-depth on it, they can get laughs because they have gone deep. They’re using comedy and solid journalistic research to push a point of view and, often, to push activism.”
Indeed, when Oliver, a former “Daily Show” correspondent, ranted against the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed changes to net neutrality laws last summer, the FCC’s comment site crashed the next day. In February, the FCC voted to keep the Internet open.
And after exposing the scant amount of scholarship money actually awarded by the Miss America pageant last September on “Last Week Tonight,” the Society of Women Engineers — which Oliver name-dropped in the episode — received $25,000 in donations in two days.
Part of that influence is attributable to the show’s reach.
While “Last Week Tonight” averages 4.4 million viewers a week on HBO, its audience on its YouTube channel — where the show posts its main investigative pieces — can be much larger. The original FIFA video ranks as the channel’s most-watched, with 10.9 million views; the net neutrality segment ranks a close second (9.4 million views).
“[YouTube] multiplies exponentially the audience for these segments,” Adair says. “Now we can share them [and] do things we couldn’t do with a regular HBO program.”
Oliver did not respond to a request for comment and, in the past, has downplayed the show’s journalism, telling “CBS This Morning” in April that his goal is “just to make people laugh.”
(“Last Week Tonight” — which has a staff of eight writers and four researchers — was awarded a Peabody Award this year.)
So while the modest host may be hesitant to take a victory lap, with Blatter successfully dethroned, there’s really only one thing left for Oliver to do on Sunday: bottoms up, mate.
Champagne…. pic.twitter.com/1S8shEcN6E
— John Oliver (@iamjohnoliver) June 2, 2015
Sepp Blatter resigned because of John Oliver? Seriously? Oh, it’s the New York Post.
Maybe that’s why some local fans get so mad when certain players get into LTRs… hurts those fans’ income.
Yeah. Bizarre suggestion.
John Oliver is a comedian who’s makes (mostly) humorous comments about the actions of others. Others who are actually involved in getting things done. No matter how many times a Jon Stewart, or John Oliver, say they are not journalists, or reporters, there will always be people who simply can not/will not understand that.
Oliver did not respond to a request for comment and, in the past, has downplayed the show’s journalism, telling “CBS This Morning” in April that his goal is “just to make people laugh.”
Comedians didn’t investigate FIFA, comedians didn’t arrest FIFA officials, comedians just want to make people laugh, and get paid for it.
That’s too simplistic. John Oliver, much like Colbert, etc does want to influence us.
And yes, comedians dont do any of those things, but their barbs can make people think and act- which amounts to the same thing.
Comedians want you to laugh all the way to their bank accounts. Oliver’s barbs didn’t make the Feds investigate, or charge, FIFA. Oliver’s shtick celebrates all those soccer fans who are now dancing around in their Underroos thanking the U.S. Justice Dept for actually confronting FIFA corruption. Corruption that seems to have been well known for decades.
Comedic barbs are usually very one-sided, and heavily edited for comedic value. Not exactly - The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth.