Last week was a suspicious sort of week. WikiLeaks are still making all the headlines since then, causing foreign secretaries and ministers to book twice the number of flights they usually embark on to allay the suspicions of their foreign colleagues and / or 'allies'. And if that weren’t fishy enough, the World Cup bidding process held last week in Zurich to determine the host nations in 2018 and 2022 raised eyebrows worldwide, and left many with more questions than answers. The Anglo trio (for want of a better collective term) of the USA, England and Australia were left with egg on their faces because of that hoary old party pooper of Russia that went on to secure WC18, not to mention a miniscule upstart from their favourite stomping ground of the Middle East.
The plucky little Asian state of Qatar had the gall to trounce the USA in a second bout of voting for WC22 after shrugging off the Aussie threat in the first round. This outcome was diplomatically referred to by US President Barack Obama as ‘a mistake’, which would surely have gone down as smooth as crude in the Middle East.
Personally speaking, I live in Sydney, Australia, and of course I also ‘cracked a sad’, albeit a fleeting one since I cannot wait for Oprah Winfrey to finally get here (yeah right). As I was telling my friend Martin when we grabbed a train from Wynyard to Central, ‘it’s a shame we didn’t get the world cup because it might finally have earned Sydney a 24 hour airport and a metro.’ Now instead all we’ll get is a big violet O on the Sydney Harbour bridge, to celebrate the arrival of America’s richest entertainer.
Successful bids
But if you think I’m upset, I’m not a patch of rage on the Anglo bidding teams whose public expressions of disbelief soon spiralled into ones of to outrage, faster than you can say ‘that half pint of Carlos Tevez is wearing a snood again!’ Their journalists are laying into FIFA with a frenzy that is only matched by the daily exposure given to latest whistleblowing pin-up boy Julian Assange.
After our train ride Martin and I had coffee at his place and watched the various bid presentations on YouTube (it's enough of an ordeal trying to keep up with live world football in this part of the world, so the bidding process was given a miss - prince charming or no prince charming).
To be honest, although Russia’s bid presentation looked like an extension of the little clip that usually precedes their 80s retro style Eurovision song contest offerings, the one presented by Qatar was impressively slick and, in my reckoning, the best by a mile. Martin was of a shared opinion, his made more relevant by his extensive career in creative design in the cutthroat world of advertising.
Qatar certainly managed to make their weaknesses look like strengths, their presentation so futuristic that they would’ve made you believe that they could host the whole thing on the moon (they’ve probably got enough oil and gas to pull that off too if they wanted), let alone in the middle of the desert.
They were also very shrewd when it came to displaying a globe that showed the number of people in different countries who would be able to access the games during the normal hours of the day, from which they conveniently, albeit justifiably, excluded the countries in Oceania region e.g. Australia. And how cool was the Qatari’s plan to disassemble stadia which are to be built for the WC22 and re-construct them in developing countries?! Unreal, if it can be pulled off.
Doubtless there’s been no end of back-scratching going on behind the scenes and the Qatari born Asian Football Confederation President Mohammed Bin Hammam must have good old backscratch with half-pint FIFA President Sepp Blatter, but hey, were we really expecting anything different from the workings of a global institution? Movie studios buy the Oscars every year and the Lord alone knows what goes on behind the scenes whenever a Pope is elected (although He is said to elect him).
But there are other questions that this whole charade of choosing two world cups threw up which many haven’t yet found an answer for. First of which being: why on earth should national associations be made to throw away all this money to launch a bid to bring home the world cup?
Shouldn’t the 'faceless' FIFA delegates draw up a strategic shortlist of willing nations (let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to host it?) that they think should organise the world cup on the basis of growing the game internationally and assign it to the best candidate for the job? All this bidding process does is pave the way for large gifts and bribes to the FIFA delegates.
National associations worldwide should just pull out and let FIFA come to them instead of parading their princes, presidents and other stars (ok we’ll make one exception for Elle Macpherson) before the FIFA delegates before returning home empty-handed. If nothing else, it will curb the resentment and suspicion that inevitably follows the bidding process and give the English Premier League (EPL) one less arrow to aim at FIFA’s behind.
Unsuccessful bids
There’s also other questions that can be picked out of the wreckage of the triple Anglo failed bid (for the sake of the blissfully unaware who might still be reading this: England lost out on WC18, US and Australia on WC22).
Let’s start with England’s bid team. Did they seriously think that parading so many foreign stars from the EPL (often perceived by FIFA and UEFA as the arch-enemy of grass roots development) in their presentation was going to endear them to the FIFA delegates? If England is the home of football, why show off so many foreign stars?
Would it not have been better to get street kids from council estates to declare how much having football ‘come back home’ would mean to them (besides a return flight to Zurich)? And did the English bid team seriously think that parading their Prince and Prime Minister was going to press any post-colonial romance buttons? With all due respect, what do the Royal Family and David Beckham (still a great English footballer, albeit one of few who does not play in England, the proclaimed home of football) represent to the rest of the world except past glories?
Perhaps one of the mistakes made by the English bid team was that they failed to realise that the world today is not what was sixty years ago, no matter how much you swan about Zurich with a big winning smile on your face and speak of confidence.
And as for the Yanks, did they seriously think they were going to get a world cup so soon after having hosted the event in 1994? Especially after going through such lengths in their presentation to explain how far their domestic league has come in recent years since USA94? And how easy was it to believe Landon Donovan’s claims that the US is a great footballing destination when he’s been pining for a move away from the MLS throughout the course of the last season?
Which is not to mention Morgan Freeman apologising for missing a page when he read his speech to FIFA (for the love of Pete, surely an Academy award winning actor can recite his speech? Especially if he’s being paid real do$h to do so?)
So for all their bells and whistles, the English and American bids appeared more like namedropping exercises rather than a delivery about what preparations they would undergo to stage the tournament itself – which is what Qatar focused on. The Anglos failed to come out with new compelling concepts, instead choosing to present their countries as being multinational states (is that not true of most developed countries these days?), with a clutch of fading stars parading the old myths of them being ‘lands of diversity and opportunity’.
To be honest, if I were a delegate, I would have felt patronised and pandered to with my intelligence insulted. In fact after the bidding process was over, some delegates referred to the arrogance of the English bid which shows that if the English FA didn’t have many friends to begin with in FIFA, they might have a few less now.
The failure of Australia certainly hurt the most. Which is not to mention the Aussie bid team’s slogan of ‘Come Play’, certainly the worst and blandest logo in the history of bids by aspiring host nations. Couldn’t they have added ‘mate’ and turned the tagline into ‘Come Play Mate’? Ok it might appear dodgier than wearing a snood, but at least it adds a bit of distinctive national flavour? Doesn’t it? There you go, even I came up with better, and I’m not even paid for it!
But joking apart, the Aussies should have taken a leaf out of Qatar’s book and focused more on turning the country's weaknesses into strengths. They could have grabbed their splendid isolation and used it to project a country that is unique, different from anywhere else - a fascinating place beyond your imagination which the world cup would give you an excuse to visit. What did the tram station and a wizened bikey version of Crocodile Dundee have to do with that? You can see all of that jazz anywhere!
They might have sold this country better by presenting it as a more exotic, off this planet paradise containing cheerful, colourful loons like me! But I suspect the bid team's efforts backfired when they tried to show that Australia has got beaches, top restaurants and cities like everyone else and more mystery should have been employed. In fact Qatar didn’t show all of their hand, give or take some 80s style moustaches among their bidding team.
In any case, the Australian representatives should not be too hard for themselves, although one vote out of twenty-two was an incredible result. Did Frank Lowy and co. truly believe that FIFA would lightly sacrifice the sleep of hundreds of millions all because of little more than circa 26 million people? (and that’s the population of NZ included). Ok by 2022 the combined populations of Australia and NZ might regrettably go up to 30 million, given the present world crisis of overpopulation, but it was always going to be a long shot to bring the World Cup down under, and one which may take another generation to achieve.
Conclusions
In any case, the selection process employed by FIFA should certainly have taught the world governing body two lessons, although I’m not sure both shall be observed. The first was that FIFA should really just select countries based on the agenda of world football. It is of no use having the USA, Australia and England staging costly bids and offering better infrastructures when you suspect all along that the tournament is going to be awarded to a new land. This should serve to eliminate bribing and curb the growing ill will towards FIFA.
The second lesson, that FIFA has proclaimed to have already learnt, is that there should never again be bids accepted for two different tournaments. It only serves to increase the number of disaffected parties, which in turn allows powerbrokers to turn the screw on FIFA and increase backroom deals and the reported corruption among FIFA delegates. In fact a friend of mine recently suggested that it might be an idea for FIFA to select willing countries further in advance without all the fuss and furore of a bidding process so that the host nation would have more time in which to prepare for the tournament.
As for the Anglos’ accusations of other bidding teams ‘buying votes’, I am not sure that it is very dignified after voting is concluded to point fingers and behave like sore losers. Especially if you profess that you knew all along that buying votes was part of the game but refused to do it, because it risks making you look even more inept rather than holy. The USA, England and Australia should take a leaf out of the book of Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium etc. and retire with good grace instead of crying foul.
However it looks like the Anglo trio are intent on persisting with flinging all kinds of accusations at FIFA. And the EPL is already sharpening its knives to make the most out of the general discontent surrounding the world governing body. This week Wigan chairman Noel Whelan made incredibly off the wall remarks when proclaiming that the EPL should turn on FIFA after the embarrassment suffered by England (erm didn’t other countries also table unsuccessful bids?) and refuse to allow their stars to play international football if FIFA refuses to compensate clubs for injuries to their stars sustained during international games.
What’s worse is that this rallying cry seems to be gathering impetus across England who also have fellow sore losers in the USA and Australia with whom to munch sour grapes. The discontentment in the latter two nations is probably of greater concern to FIFA, given that they are both new world countries where football is still competing with other sports to become the number one domestic game.
Perhaps FIFA President Sepp Blatter had best go on a charm offensive to claw back these disgruntled nations. By putting on one of his many forced smiles, he could further stun the Anglo world by donning the gown and crown, and after sauntering onto a stage and shaking his pelvis, sing (with curled lower lip) in his most crooning, baritone voice:
