The fall out from England’s failed world cup bid is already in full flow and fingers are already being pointed in all kinds of directions with FIFA, the FA, Panorama and even Vlaiamir Putin all coming in for stick.
One thing I do believe though, is that never again should we be putting people like our future King (and I’m not a Royalist), our PM (or a massive fan of Cameron) and footballing icons like David Beckham, Bobby Charlton, etc, in the embarrassing position of having to pander to a bunch of shady characters like this lot.
How humiliating must it have been for Prince Willaim and David Beckham to have to sit through the results knowing that practically no one within FIFA took an ounce of notice of them. The FIFA executives just lapped up their attention and then laughed in their faces.
Quite where it went wrong, who knows. Did Putin not turn up ahead of the vote because he already knew the result and that he didn’t need too? Did FIFA want to teach the English a lesson? Or was it simply that FIFA wanted to take football to new corners of the globe?
Some people are blaming the BBC and their Panorama programme, I don’t buy that one myself. I also believe that all these people claiming that the BBC should have waited til a couple of days after the vote before screening the programme are deluded.
Did the FIFA executives not notice Andrew Jennings jumping out of bushes asking them questions over the last 18 months? FIFA knew that the programme had been made, so what difference did it make when it was shown? None in my view.
Congratulations to Russia, I do believe that they are worthy winners for 2018, I really haven’t got a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is the manner in which the voting was carried out and a massive problem with the hosting of the 2022 competition in Qatar.
Apparently England only got 2 votes in the first ballot, with one of them coming from Geoff Thompson. Holland and Belgium got 4, nothing out of the ordinary there. What happened next was strange though, the Holland and Belgium bid only picked up 2 votes in the second ballot.
Why? It seems very strange that they lost 2 votes after the first round of voting. It is something which doesn’t seem to have been picked up by the mass ranks of the media, but it smells of an England stitch up to me.
Common sense tells you that a bidding nation(s) should gain votes going through the process, as one nation drops out, their votes would be spread around the remaining bidders.
That is unless you have already decided to conduct the vote to deliberately eliminate a bidding nation at the first hurdle.
If FIFA had already decided that they wanted to take the world cup to new horizons in Russia and Qatar, then they could have done us all a favour and told us about it a few years earlier, preferably before we started the bidding process.
Another theory doing the rounds that could have some credence, is the fact that two oil and gas rich nations with bottomless bits of money to throw at their respective campaigns have won.
But why wouldn’t two clean countries with all that money win a clean FIFA vote fair and square?
The Qatar one in particular is laughable. They were probably the worst bid of the 2 world cups and yet won the most easily. It totally stinks and I notice Barack Obama hasn’t been slow in letting it be known, at least he had the sense not to bother to turn up.
I hope this dosen’t come across as sour grapes, as it certainly isn’t. But while this current FIFA regime is still in place I don’t believe that England should even consider bidding to host any future world cup. Just what would be the point?
Stani Army
We need to be careful here as a nation Dean and take it more graciously. Yes we have a right to be upset as I will expand on below. It was obvious that the rest of Europe hated us but now we know that the rest of the world also does. There is a lot about English past and present that is the cause of this. I’m just sad that we had to send some of our good guys (Wills, Becks) to be the face that would take this embarrassing kind of antipathy that the rest of the world wanted to show us.
Was we naive in thinking that the best bid is the bid that would win? In hindsight, yes. It is clear what Blatter and Fifa are trying to do in spreading the game around the world. Where the wrong lies is that they should have made this clear beforehand.
I’m sure had they said to all the countries before the bids that ‘You are free to bid, but we will prefer to take the game to nations who have not had it’ then I’m certain England wouldn’t have bothered. That is where the issue is in my opinion.
What should be done about it? Well I think there should be no bidding process. It should be shared, turn by turn, in an orderly manner amongst continents and then countries within those continents i.e in Europe Spain, then four years later, Asia and China, then four years later S.America Mexico for example. Not only would this save money in millions spent on bids, but there will be no arguments either.
As for the actual bids; I firmly believe there was collusion and Russia had it all planned out perfectly. The reason 2 votes switched from Neth/Belg to Russia in round two is because those two voters had been sweetened up and were always going to vote Russia BUT Russia needed England out as it was a big threat. The bid with the lowest votes in round one goes out so Russia could not afford Neth/Belg (the weakest bid) to go out first as then England would still be in there. So, they tactically made those two voters go for Neth/Belg so that England would be eliminated straight away.
Cricket Betting Blog
Hi Stani,
I have no problem with it going to Russia, I wrote that in the piece. I think they were due to hold a world cup and that their time has come and their bid was a strong one.
I also don’t think it should necessarily go to the best bid either, as it would always be in the same 2 or 3 countries. I’m not basing my moan on the fact that we (apparently) had the best bid.
What I can’t comprehend is the tactical voting that you highlighted in your last paragraph, that just proves it was a fix.
And I also can’t stand FIFA’s bullshit, to blame the media is nothing more than a convenient excuse and cover up of their fixing, I’m glad Andy Anson didn’t stand for it.
I know what you mean about the competition going to new host countries as well. But that dosen’t explane how Australia got eliminated in their respective 1st round of voting with just ONE VOTE.
Thats a disgrace, going on the ‘new countires’ theory, Australia and Qatar should have been the final two nations left in the voting.
I have no problem with Russia getting it, just the manner in which they got it. And I think the Aussies got a far worse deal than we did.