Blattered beyond belief

So now we know who will host the World Cup Finals in 2018. It won't be England. It won't be Spain and Portugal. It won't be the Netherlands and Belgium. It will be Russia.

Sepp Blatter has, like the Vatican chimney, issued forth the puff of white smoke that has identified which country will enjoy the lucrative host nation status, seven years and eight months from now.

The inevitable media inquest is already blaming the media itself. The BBC's decision to screen a Panorama investigation into alleged FIFA corruption, just four days before the vote, is bearing the brunt of this backlash. Even Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has helpfully chimed in that the British media was to blame (a kind of reverse of the famous headline IT'S THE SUN WOT WON IT). But I disagree.

Panorama's somewhat underwhelming exposé and the original Sunday Times scoop may well have coloured opinions within FIFA about England as a nation, but I don't think it made a blind bit of difference to the vote. FIFA had wanted to see a World Cup staged in Eastern Europe, as much as it chose Qatar - a nation smaller than the Falkland Islands - over the United States to host the competition in 2022.

If FIFA had simply come out and said that they wanted Russia to stage it, they could have saved us all the bother - and all the nudge-nudge, wink-winking about what's been going on behind closed and not-so closed doors in the run-up to the Zurich vote. 

Rightly or wrongly, the Sunday Times and the BBC have shone the spotlight on an institution which is, at best, out of touch with modern corporate transparency, and at worst, rotten to its core. Alleged bribery nothwithstanding, the World Cup voting process has been carried out with all the objectivity and probity of the Eurovision Song Contest, determined by hotel corridor politicking and schmoozing amid clouds of cigar smoke and the fumes of a glass of Remy Martin.

To learn, as we have done now, that England failed at the first round of voting makes a mockery of some of the early optimism and even positive indications coming from some of the voting members. England, we're told, had the best presentation, the best bid, and the personal involvement of Prince William, David Beckham and David Cameron (whom, we were told at every opportunity, had shuttled between Zurich and Westminster for PMQs and back again. Bravo, Dave! You're clearly one of the people).

England's 2018 bid ticked - on paper at least - all the right boxes. It would have rewarded the world with the authentic football experience in the very country where it all began. Football would have come home: there's a reason the English Premier League is the most televised football league around the world; there's a reason the FA Cup is one of the most popular annual events around the world. It would have all been good. Even the Dutch and the Spanish - who were also bidding for 2018 - were saying that England should win it.

Sadly, England's fate was sealed long before Wills straightened his comb-over and made any awful jokes about his own "big event". We English pride our sense of fair play. We take pride in queuing and pour scorn on any Johnny Foreigner who disrespects our love of manners, decency and refined order. We dislike cheating and dishonesty. The World Cup is not just a sporting extravaganza, but an enormous enterprise for FIFA and host nation alike. And yet it's location is determined by a process akin to a chief constable "seeing what he can do" about the parking ticket of a fellow mason. 

And what of the winning bid? We should, I suppose, congratulate Russia. No, really. We know that it will be a shambles; the fan experience will be dreadful, the racist culture in Russian football will not be solved, the public transport will be a disaster, the hotels will be inadequate, the stadia will be badly built with Mafia money, the visa process will be inflexible, and the overall infrastructure a mess. But FIFA has got what it wanted - a World Cup in the east.

So why go through a bid process in the first place? Why not accept the bag of roubles and have done with the circus that rolled into Zurich this week? The probity of the FIFA voting process should be called into question. It obviously has nothing to do with integrity, national reputation or even the ability to present a viable proposition, but personal favours, personal interests and...well, who knows what else? It's clear the whole thing is as bent and crooked as a DVD sold at a street market. 

FIFA is not an administrative organisation, but a political gentlemen's club where networking and influence is currency. It is run with stunning arrogance by a leadership that considers proven acts of bribery worthy only of the equivalent of wrapped knuckles. Perhaps, on reflection, England shouldn't want to be awarded a World Cup as a result of the back-handers and two-faced deceit that went on.

This is the second World Cup disaster England has suffered this year; but whereas the England team's ejection from South Africa in June was rightfully blamed on poor performance, few could fault the impressive show put on by the England 2018 bid team to try and swing votes their way.  

The sad part is that England won't get an opportunity to bid again until the process begins for the 2030 World Cup. 66 years since the Jules Rimet trophy was last presented on English soil to the world champion of football. And that's an awful lot of hurt.

'Ere we go, 'ere we go, 'ere we go again

Like most technological and cultural trends, I’m somewhat late to the blog party. But this week I sailed my maiden voyage as a blogger.

It felt good. It felt good to get things off my chest about England’s dejected world cup ejection. Did I move any arguments on? No. Of course not.

That wasn’t the point. In joining the cacophony of caterwauling about the anti-climax that was England’s World Cup, I merely added to the phalanx of comment on the subject.

When my partner asked if my blog would only be about football I said no. And so it was going to be, until I read further blather from Joseph 'Sepp' Blatter, the preposterously resilient FIFA president. Forced into an embarassing mea culpa on Frank Lampard's disallowed goal, Blatter is quoted as saying that, on the subject of goal-line technology: "We will naturally take on board the discussion [on technology] and have the first opportunity in July at the [FIFA] business meeting." That sounds to me like nothing more than a crumb. Master politics from a master politician.

The argument for technology "to assist referees" has bounced around like a ball going in off the crossbar for too long now. In 1966 at Wembley, when apparently the world was coloured black and white, a Russian linesman gave Geoff Hurst a goal when a ball just about went over the German goal line. On Sunday, Frank Lampard's ball didn't just cross the line, it passed through the line and set up camp a full yard inside the German goal. Indeed, I'm surprised the ball didn't need FIFA accreditation to get that far into the ground.

The technology exists: various companies have offered solutions, from RFID chips in the ball to cameras more powerful than those that read your number plate and tell you what you've had for breakfast. Tennis has embraced it. As have the rugby codes. But not football. Not the world's most popular sport. Not, in the World Cup, the world's most viewed event. An event that has generated over $1.6 billion in sponsorship revenue for FIFA in the four years since 2007. An event that will generate almost $3.5 billion in advertising revenue. With such sums sloshing about, FIFA has a duty to all concerned in the game to ensure it is not only professionally financed, but professionally administered.

Refereeing at this World Cup has been a joke, with the inconsistency of decisions merely the warm-up act to the top billing of comedic calamity like that experienced by Mexico and England - decisions Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles would have laughed in unison at for their shere ineptitude. I'm not laughing.

On the FIFA website, Blatter has admitted to personally apologising "for what happened" to England and Mexico, who both suffered from refereeing blunders. Even so, Blatter and his cohorts have repeatedly dismissed the idea of technology to prevent such errors. There has even been suggestion that human error was part of the fun of football.

It's not. It makes a mockery of the whole point of football: unlike American baseball, in which, much like an episode of Seinfeld, when nothing happens it is considered a stroke of tactical genius, football is about scoring goals. For those who haven't cottoned on, one team wins by putting the ball over the line more often than the opposition. It's not rocket science. But apparently it now requires rocket science to prove something that basic has happened.

"Still," Blatter snorts, "it’s not the end of the competition, it’s not the end of football." No, it's not the end of football. No, it's not the end of the World Cup either. Most right-minded observers would agree that England were probably not good enough to go past Germany and, even with the score at 2-2, they would have been unlikely to gain any advantage, in normal time, in added time or in the dreaded penalties.

But it is important. It does matter. To bring up Bill Shankly's oft-misquoted and oft-used statement: "Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that." And it is.