2018 World Cup

Insideworldfootball.biz

The last few weeks have hardly been an advertisement for world football with corruption scandals engulfing FIFA, but for Alexey Sorokin, chief executive of the Russian 2018 organising committee, none of this will dim the glory of the World Cup.

“No, no”, he tells me, “all the controversies in the world cannot take the glitter away from the World Cup.

“The event is of such magnitude that, no matter what happens around it, it’s still going to be a great event.

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Insideworldfootball.biz

The past, in football, is not a foreign country. It is ever present and always points the way to what is going to happen. The FIFA Congress in Zurich was a wonderful illustration of that.

What it showed was that Sepp Blatter uses the football past as if he owns it, and the English Football Association never seem to learn from history.

Sepp Blatter proved the ultimate politician, as he has done so often in the past, and the English FA, showed, once again, that the country that gave us the game still cannot work out how the modern game, particularly the modern football political game, works. The defeat inflicted on England was, in some ways, an even more shattering defeat than the one England suffered in the same hall back in December when it only got two votes for its 2018 World Cup bid.

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It was entirely predictable that Sepp Blatter’s comments on the 2022 World Cup in Qatar being played in January raised a howl of protest.

Not only does it seem extraordinary that after the game is over, the rules of the game are changed, but the near-revolution this would cause to the European game is incalculable.

But what has been missed in all this is that Blatter, the most consummate of sports politicians – one who could teach those who make a living out of politics a trick or two – is not actually concerned about whether the World Cup moves to winter.

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Insideworldfootball.biz

It did not take long for the board of the Football Association to choose David Bernstein as the new chairman. The whole thing, I am told, took a bare five minutes. He was nominated, all hands went up and on to the next business.

However, sometime after this decision, there was a report by Andy Anson on England’s disastrous World Cup bid for 2018. Here something rather curious happened.

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This has been a year when it has been difficult to get away from the World Cup. Africa holding its first World Cup, unmemorable on the field, but fascinating off it. And the epic struggle to stage the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. The bidding process was fascinating/intriguing/disgraceful/you-couldn’t-make-it-up (take your pick). Here is my pick of the stories I did as the events unfolded and reached their climax in the icy centre of Zurich.

Back in May, interviewed Sepp Blatter: he was already singing Russia’s praises, and there was talk even then of deals being made over Qatar. Spoke in the Sunday Telegraph about the complexities of the voting, warning that, ‘Given how small the electorate is, even a perfect campaign may not deliver the perfect result.’  Also spoke of England’s need (and lack) of a key figure on their bid team to play the same role that Beckenbauer did for Germany when the 2006 host was being decided. Beckham just wouldn’t be able to fill that role.

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