- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Australian soccer stars Harry Kewell, left, Collette McCallum 2nd left, Cheryl Salisbury, 2nd right, and Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Sydney, Australia, Tuesday, May 20, 2008 hold a "Kevin 18" team jersey in reference to the counrtry's bid for the 2018 Soccer World Cup. AP Photo/Rob Griffith
First of all, let’s get something straight: FIFA’s apparent back flip on who can bid for the 2018 World Cup hosting rights has nothing to do with Australia and everything to do with Europe.
The world governing body aren’t just shafting Football Federation Australia, they are leaving everyone outside of the European power base in the lurch.
We should be angry, but not surprised. Just ask Serbia, Ukraine, Ireland or Slovenia.
Instead, Sepp Blatter’s comments should serve as a reminder of how small of a fish Australia is in the global sized pool that is world football.
How we as Australians react to this turn of events will further help to set the tone of our future with “the world game”.
We can decide that we want to be players, bide our time and do what we must to slowly climb the ladder or we may choose the opposite. We can declare that if world football doesn’t want us we’ll turn our back on them and revel in our commonwealth and national sports.
I hope it’s the former.
In the meantime, surely we must begin to start asking serious questions of those left in control of our World Cup bid following a flurry of embarrassing stories.
For a bid that was at one stage listed as the frontrunner by a number of UK betting companies, it’s a remarkable fall from grace.
So what has happened?
Last week, I caught up with someone who was very close to the Australian bid team while they were in South Africa last year for the 2010 World Cup draw. He was more then a little bit flattering of Bonita Mersiades’ work in Cape Town last December and he is far from one of her biggest fans.
So Bonita’s departure from FFA, announced late last week, is significant but of course without the full story we can’t appropriate any blame.
Where we can point the finger at FFA is for being caught off guard by Sepp Blatter’s comments that FIFA were considering only accepting European bids for the 2018 World Cup hosting rights.
Ray Gatt in The Australian has done just that writing, “As FFA recovers from the shattering news that Blatter has moved the goalposts and wants Europe to host the 2018 finals, effectively consigning Australia’s hopes to the dust bin of political expediency, the blowtorch is now being turned on FFA’s international advocacy consultants, led by Peter Hargitay.”
So it should be. I brought up Hargitay’s role with the Australian bid shortly after I met him in Cairo last year and received a mixed response form The Roar’s community of readers.
Well, if that wasn’t the moment, then I am certain the time has now come to ask how someone declared as having “unique experience and expertise with FIFA and in world football”, and at a minimum earning AU$2.5 million of tax payer money, dropped the ball so badly.
FFA’s rough time of late doesn’t end there either. On the back of a certain “eggball vs round ball” debate, Australia was also outmanoeuvred by Qatar’s bid in Angola.
All of this coming after FFA’s team had done so well to put the bid in a strong position.
Less then two months ago, Australia was as real of a World Cup hosting candidate as any of the others. But is that still the case?
The free ride is over, the Australian bid has begun to flail, and it’s time to starting asking questions.
Are you the ultimate team manager? Pick your own superstar team and go head to head with other football fans for glory and cash prizes on Draftstars. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.