I already posted this on Twitter, but some things need to be enshrined for posterity. Like my favorite page from FIFA’s 2009 Financial Report:
PHOTOGRAPHER: Why don’t you lean forward alluringly and stroke your chin? Just graze your index finger across it like only you know the solution to the mystery that you are.
GRONDONA: Really? I…I think I should just do something basic, like sit and look at the camera…
PHOTOGRAPHER: Excuse me, what room is this? Does the sign on the door say “Basic photography of people with no imaginations”? Because I thought it said “FIFA Financial Report 2009 Photoshoot/2010 Sextacular.”
GRONDONA: Sex…whatcular?
PHOTOGRAPHER: This is the FIFA FINANCIAL REPORT, Julio. That means something in my profession.
GRONDONA: Oh. Well, I guess I could…cock my head a little…like this…
PHOTOGRAPHER: Cock your head a little? Cock your head? You think I’m putting my name on a shot of you tilting your head like a stewardess while Valcke’s posing next door in a tiger skin? Do you know how long he’s been in there, Julio? That bastard McManus has been shooting him for seventeen hours. We have to think BIG.
GRONDONA: Oh, ah, okay. Big. How big?
PHOTOGRAPHER: I want you to look into this camera like you know you are going to make love to every single person who ever sees your face from now until the day you die.
GRONDONA: I’m 79 years old!
PHOTOGRAPHER: Oh, I see, you’re 79 years old. I guess I forgot that means you’re irrelevant. 79 years old — do you know what else you are? You are JULIO F’ING GRONDONA. You are the JEWEL OF ARGENTINA. You are the FERTILE CRESCENT OF THIS SORRY WORLD.
GRONDONA: Oh. I am?
PHOTOGRAPHER: Tell me this. Who achieved a solid equity basis?
GRONDONA: I…I…
PHOTOGRAPHER: Did Issa Hayatou achieve a solid equity basis?
GRONDONA: No…I guess I did that.
PHOTOGRAPHER: You achieved a solid equity basis. YOU ACHIEVED A SOLID EQUITY BASIS. You have earned the right to lower your chin as though you are murmuring into a concealed lapel mic while looking erotically amused at the universe.
GRONDONA: I have!
PHOTOGRAPHER: Say it with me!
GRONDONA: I ACHIEVED A SOLID EQUITY BASIS!
PHOTOGRAPHER: Now dip that shoulder and burn like Valentino!
Some people are just blessed, I guess. Anyway, if you haven’t yet, check out my new Grantland piece on FIFA corruption for the same theme played out in a less visually transfixing way.
Read More: FIFA
by Brian Phillips · August 16, 2011
PHOTOGRAPHER: Now to just green-screen in the desktop background from my old iMac and away we go!
It’s… just… beautiful.
The really scary thing is that an identical picture of Grondona appears — over different slogans — in every FIFA financial report going back to at least the early 2000s. They must have to re-enact this same scene every year.
This is just Annie Leibovitz and Miley Cyrus all over again. Except probably the exact opposite.
I’m pretty sure that’s not even his own hand.
I try not to reflect too much on my awkward youth, but Christ, the damage I could’ve done as a single man if I’d only been able to achieve a solid equity basis.
“You are the FERTILE CRESCENT OF THIS SORRY WORLD.”
brilliant.
@Brian Phillips Someone needs to make a collage of all these Grondonas.
Good article in Grantland, by the by. Now I don’t need to rant at people about FIFA corruption anymore, I can just hand them a piece of paper that says GOOGLE
RON PAULFIFA CORRUPTION GRANTLAND.The lovechild of Brian Clough and Alec Baldwin? Anyone?
@Jim I second that.
I’m imagining that out of shot Grondona is riding a donkey backwards, pantless, with sock suspenders and a candystriped banana hammock.
Best post ever
I envisioned the action before the pic slightly more rehearsed, whereby Grondon is facing just off camera but instructed to suddenly stare at the camera and put his hand to his chin, as if surprised.
Looks more like an unidentified model holding a Grondona mask in front of his face.
see, considering grondona’s priors, i would guess that this exchange happened but the other way round – basically switch the photographer and grondona’s lines (and correct necessary grammar) and you’ve probably got the conversation verbatim… because surely grondona doesn’t need some photographer to tell him something he already knows. (that thing, of course, being that grondona is the fertile crescent of this sorry world.)