England’s bid to host the World Cup in 2018 had been doomed to failure for a while. And that made Fifa’s decision to award the tournament to another country anything but a surprise to me.
There were several reasons for this inevitable failure, not least of which was the English media’s insistence on carrying out a corruption witch-hunt among the very people who were about to make the crucial decision. It was like walking up to a girl, telling her that her jeans make her backside look fat, and then asking her if she fancies going out for a drink on Friday.
If you make accusations – founded or not – about someone who holds your fate in their hands, there is no way that same person is going to do you any favours. What were they expecting: I’ll scratch your back if you’ll stab me in mine? Life just doesn’t work that way.
However, while the English media didn’t help the situation, the reality is England’s fate had been sealed long before that because, quite simply, the Fifa hierarchy do not like England.
How can you have the best bid, the most commercially viable bid, and the bid with least risk, and then lose in a ‘democratic’ vote to a country that scored lower on every single count?
The truth is, awarding the 2018 contest to Russia has only served to make the cloud of suspicion hanging over Fifa that much more murky. Everybody I have spoken to about it in the last 48 hours has asked a similar question: “I wonder how much it cost them?”
And the reason for that is the stupid, secretive, almost clandestine voting process that Fifa insists on using. The more you do behind closed doors, the more people’s suspicions will be raised.
And to add to that heightened sense of mistrust, how on earth can Fifa justify awarding the 2022 tournament to Qatar? Last week, I jokingly said I would love to see the tiny nation hosting the World Cup. But that was only because I thought it was never going to happen.
You are talking about a country with a population only twice the size of Malta. A country with hardly any stadiums capable of hosting big matches. A country where football is not played in the summer because the balls might melt.
The logistics behind organising a tournament there are outrageously complicated. I fail to think of a single thing Qatar has going for it apart from money. But that says it all really.
It all raises so many questions that will never be answered, while the people on that executive committee get to sip their fine wines and decide on the fate of football in absolute secrecy.
England will not be able to host the tournament for at least another 20 years. And will anything have changed by then? Will it be worth them even bothering to try for the 2030 World Cup? Under the current system, absolutely not.
The crux of the problem with the way things work now is that too much power is vested in too few people. If Sepp Blatter loves pushing the fact that Fifa now has over 200 member associations – and he loves pushing that fact – then all those countries should be given a vote.
And that voting process, when it happens, should be in public, not behind closed doors like some prehistoric gentlemen’s club.
One of the things that apparently caused the executive committee to turn their back on the home of football for 2018 was they wouldn’t be able to cope with the media intrusion over the next eight years.
Well, with the way things have worked out, they should expect that intrusion to be doubled. Fleet Street will unleash the journalistic hounds of hell on Blatter and his pals over the coming years.
It’s not going to be pretty.
A need to be firm
The incidents at the Birmingham City vs Aston Villa match last week were a throwback to a time I thought had been confined to English football history.
Thousands of home fans rushed on to the pitch following their League Cup quarter-final win over their fierce rivals, which in a way was understandable.
I’m not saying it should happen, but once in a while, when a game really means something to a certain set of fans, you can expect a bit of over-exuberance.
However, the main issue in my mind isn’t that they invaded the pitch; it is that they did so with the primary intention of causing trouble. Flares were fired and missiles thrown in scenes which were eerily reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s.
What’s important now is that the Football Association comes down hard on the fans who were heavily involved in the incident and the clubs themselves.
I realise the latter may seem a bit harsh, but sometimes the only way the morons who carry out these random acts of violence learn is when the only thing they really care about – their football club – suffers.
A game or two behind closed doors may be just what they need to shake the supporters up and drive home the fact that their stupidity has serious consequences. And couple that with a very, very hefty fine.
I realise this is pretty much a one-off incident in the greater scheme of things. For the most part it is a disease that has been eradicated in England.
But as we saw in the last century, it is one that can spread swiftly if it isn’t dealt with quickly.
Getting off lightly
Talking of punishments, how can Uefa justify the pathetic punishments they gave to Jose Mourinho and his two players last week?
Both Sergio Ramos and Xabi Alonso managed to get sent off for time-wasting during Real Madrid’s Champions League match against Ajax.
By doing so, they conveniently got themselves suspended for the Spanish club’s irrelevant final group stage match but then freed themselves up to return to action when the knock-out stage begins.
It is a blatant act of disciplinary manipulation by Mourinho, and one which makes a mockery of the concept of fair play.
But instead of clamping down hard on those involved in this little conspiracy, Uefa dished out little more than a slap on the wrist. More of a tickle actually.
The Real Madrid boss was fined €40,000 and banned from the touchline for two matches while the players were each fined €20,000. Mourinho probably earns that sort of money in a day, while the players can probably rattle it off while spending an afternoon by the pool. A deterrent of cosmic proportions.
To make the whole thing even more laughable, out of Mourinho’s two-match ban, one of those is suspended and will only come into play if he does something else naughty in the next three years (likely, I admit).
So what that means is that, wait for it, surprise, surprise, Mourinho himself will be clear to pace the touchline when the knock-out stage of the Champions League gets underway.
Essentially, Uefa have followed in Mourinho’s footsteps by getting his punishment out of the way during a meaningless match.
What a superb all-round display of justice.
Quotes of the week
A couple nice quotes were doing the rounds last week, the first of which comes from that old favourite Neil Warnock:
“When the chips are down, the top dogs usually come up smelling of roses,” the QPR manager said, in a display of awesome language skills.
The second one comes from under-fire Fifa executive member Jack Warner, who was accused of dodgy dealings by the BBC’s Panorama programme:
“I would not dignify you with my spit. You’re garbage,” he told Panorama reporter Andrew Jennings.
Now there’s a man with nothing to hide.
sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com