Today’s announcement that Russia will host the 2018 World Cup was nothing short of a shambles. David Beckham, one of England’s ambassadors for the bid, was more diplomatic and praised Russia and Qatar as ‘two great countries’.
The romance of taking football to the east is completely lost on me I’m afraid. In awarding the 2018 World Cup to one of the most corrupt countries in the world, FIFA has truly shamed itself. The awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a country whose bid was described by FIFA itself as ‘seriously high-risk’, borders on the ludicrous.
One could argue that it makes sense for FIFA to award the World Cup to nations which have never before hosted the tournament. It could encourage the development of the game in these countries. However, in that case, there is no point in countries such as England bidding for future tournaments. The Premier League Chairman has said that England’s excellent stadia could have counted against our bid. Sepp Blatter and company may have felt that it is better to encourage the development of new stadia and general infrastructure of other countries.
Putting that aside for a moment, the key question for me is how England’s bid, which many FIFA officials described as being the strongest all-round bid, managed to muster only 2 out of 22 votes in the voting process, resulting in elimination at the first stage. The members of England’s bid team were clearly lied to by several members of the FIFA Executive Committee, whose promised England their votes. The much-maligned British media should expose these members for their duplicity.
It is clear that many backroom deals must have been done between Russia and representatives of other member states. Watching today’s proceedings was highly reminiscent of watching the voting process in the Eurovision Song Contest. Serbia and other Eastern Europe states don’t even try and hide the fact that they are openly biased towards Russia; Serbian winters are extremely cold and Moscow turning off the gas would be highly inconvenient.
As news coverage has suggested, part of the problem of the FA is that England didn’t ‘work the room’. We don’t do schmoozing, infiltrating and influencing very well. If England plans a future bid to host the World Cup, the FA need to play a more active role in FIFA, infiltrating its various committees. The higher echelons of FIFA are rank with corruption and many of its members need naming and shaming into early retirement.
The bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups has raised many questions, questions which must not go unanswered.
