MATURE REFLECTION?



I have resisted commenting on the FIFA World Cup fiasco for 24 hours, so as to let it all sink in a bit further.   And something tells me I should `get over it,` let sleeping dogs lie and all that.  But it`s difficult.

What`s difficult is not so much that England`s bid was not favoured by FIFA`s Executive Committee, but coming to terms with the selection process itself.  I had a bit of a go about that the other day, so I won`t repeat here what I said then.   But if anything, the selection process is now clearly much more open to question than it was even a couple of days ago.

Now of course, I`m disappointed but perhaps no more so than the good folk of Australia, America, Belgium, Holland, Spain, Portugal or any of the other countries who had submitted bids for both 2018 and 2022.   And whilst they might be dancing in the streets of Russia and Qatar, surely even in those successful countries there must be the odd twinge of doubt about the validity of the process which selected them.  

I am not going to suggest that England would have done a better job of staging the World Cup than, say, Spain or Portugal or anyone else, but I do believe that the bid was technically, financially and operationally as sound as anyone else`s.   So it`s clear that the final selection was made using other criteria.  I am left with the unpalatable conclusion that, when it came to it, the only criterion that really mattered was cold, hard cash, hammered out through backhanded deals, almost reverential fawning, ego massaging and whispered promises.  

Now, it`s claimed that the recent allegations in the English media were a telling factor in the almost out of hand rejection of England`s bid.   If that`s true, then it kind of reaffirms that FIFA have things to hide, that they blanch at any `outside interference` and that they cannot come to terms with a free press and want little to do with a country that, by and large, upholds the principle of free speech. 

On balance, therefore and given the choice between having a World Cup or a free press, I think I would prefer to have the latter.  And also, given the choice between winning a competition fairly and squarely or winning through means other than those which relied on transparency and objectivity, I would go for the former.   In the end, I`m probably relieved that England were not awarded the 2018 World Cup because the way that FIFA conducts itself is such that there can be little satisfaction in having their patronage.  In a curious way, perhaps those countries who were not successful with their bids might turn out to be winners after all.   At least they can sleep nights.