I am writing this to stir up support from the football passionate and those who just wanted Australia to host the biggest sporting event in the world.
It would have seen huge investment into all infrastructure, including large scale AFL and NRL stadia improvements, three new host stadiums and the giant of tourism that couldn’t be obtained through any advertising campaign or a million Oprah visits.
This was our time, with the US, Japan and Korea having already hosted the event, it left only Qatar, a nation sitting 113th in the men’s national team ranking and getting up to 50 degrees in summer (but more on that later) against Australia. Our bid was the only logical bid that could have won the 2022 World Cup, but of course, this was not a logical bidding process.
It is unacceptable that for the first time the bids for two consecutive World Cups are made, the process gets turned upside down with cross-bid deals and a biased Asian Football Confederation President putting his own country ahead of Asia.
It was the AFC President’s job to ensure the best country within the AFC, with the biggest total benefit for the whole of Asia, got the World Cup. But instead we seemingly had the AFC President only representing his country of birth, not what was the best interest of Asia.
Why should we accept that this was a valid bidding process? Isn’t it reasonable that the vote specifically for 2022 should be reviewed and then re-taken after the 2014 World Cup, at the end of the year in 2014?
If it was a mistake to have two separate World Cup announcements at the same time, and what I believe was a one-off, why should we accept that it happened to be the our country that suffered from it, mostly because our bid was the front runner and the only reasonable bid to succeed?
We have invested too much into this process, it was the only chance for Australia to host the event and every single point was leading to Australia being successful. I cannot think of one reason, not one reason, why Qatar should host the event ahead of us, particularly in this time-frame.
How can a country who was rejected from hosting the one-city Olympics, being described as too small, then turn around and get the 12 city FIFA World Cup? I think the UAE or another Middle East country could have possibly hosted a World Cup in the next 20 or 30 years, but not Qatar, and not in 2022.
It is the most ridiculous announcement of FIFA’s history and if they respect the bidding process and what attention should have been given to the bids from 2022, they will review the decision and bid, and do it again in 2014.
If Qatar can win the bid with an explanation from every member who voted for them, as to why they should get the event instead of Australia or even the US, then I will accept that the process has dictated the best nation’s bid deserved to host the world’s pre-eminent sporting competition.
Until some evidence can be given, until some sort of an explanation as to why this has happened, I will not accept the result for the 2022 World Cup and neither should the rest of Australia, the US, Japan and Korea, or even England.
The most poorly rated bid by FIFA has won the 2022 World Cup. How can this be justified?
thom_canberra
Roar Rookie
Racist?? I think you're the one with mistruths...
thom_canberra
Roar Rookie
If Australians were deluded into believing we had a chance, Qatar must have been mentally ill to think they had a better bid than the US, Australia and even Japan or Korea. But yet they won the bid through FIFA corruption, and people like you talk as if Qatar deserved to win the WC hosting rights in 2022. Australia isn't the biggest football nation, we are ranked 20th, but hardly 'plankton'... you can whinge all you want about how tiny football is in Australia but Qatar is ranked 113th, they are smaller than plankton in the FIFA ocean! We are more of a football nation than Qatar will ever be.
thom_canberra
Roar Rookie
Well i'm not sure if any of the 22 FIFA delegates have been to Qatar? Why would I have to go to Qatar to know that it is the size of Fiji and totally incapable of hosting a WC let alone in 50 degree heat. South Africa was criticised hugely for being ranked 50th and not being able to participate competitively in their World Cup, Qatar is ranked extremely poorly and isn't a football country. Shouldn't FIFA World Cups be given to nations that are at least in the top 100 of the world rankings? I'm not saying every nation outside the top 50 are insignificant, but every nation outside the top 100 should have a brilliant bid to be considered for hosting footballs premier event and Qatar had the worst ranked bid by FIFA.
Ben
Guest
You could support West Ham, where hearts are broken every week :)
mahony
Guest
lol! Now that is the best laugh I have had in a liong time - and boy do I need it right now. Loose the cup bid than the Brisbane nick an equaliser in the dying seconds of the game. Football has broken my heart twice this week.
mahony
Guest
To your last sentance - it is you and others like you who suffer a cultural cringe (is this why you are an expat?). Football fans have ambitions for our country. I take your point about some aspects of our bid, for each problem we had Qatar have several and we lost on the politics plain and simple. As to your shot about the size of the codes in Aus - football is number one at the grass roots and national team level by some distance (the AFL doesnt even have a national team). It is the all important commerdial 'middle' of the pyramid where football still suffers by comparison to two of the toher three codes. That is the part of the game that now gets FFA's undivided attention. In summary, back in your uninformed, cringing, ex-pat box...
Derby County FC
Guest
Thanks for the link moonface. (http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/james-lawton-its-an-insult-to-australias-great-sporting-tradition-that-fifa-took-the-money-and-ran-with-qatar-2150856.html) "Australia is a great sporting nation – pound for pound perhaps the greatest, even after feeding into the computer the current difficulties of Ricky Ponting's Ashes contenders. Qatar, relatively speaking, is a speck of sand. Yet they wheeled in 14 votes in their crunching triumph. Australia, brilliant hosts of the 2000 Olympics – 44 years after cutting their teeth with the Melbourne Games – and the rugby union and cricket world cups, mustered just one. How could it possibly be? What else but money, the money that flows into the ruling family of Qatar who own the third most valuable oil and gas deposits in the world? Blatter made a stomach-wrenching speech about the combative nature of football and how that also applied to the staging of the sport's greatest event. He made it sound like a toe-to-toe battle involving brilliant planning and mind-expanding innovation. He made it sound like some gripping race for the right to stage the greatest show on earth. He made it sound both bold and decent. It was neither. It was the money-grubbing which has become so intertwined in the administration of the world's most popular game. It means that Qatar – which is a sort of toddling version of Dubai with less bling and C-list celebrities and infinitely more money and American-made fighter planes, and where you can't get a drink without considerable inconvenience and then have to consume it in some gloomy tavern which might have come straight from the pages of Charles Dickens – will be in charge of the world's greatest sports event. And what will Qatar give to football, apart from oodles of money to Fifa? They will show football how you air-condition whole stadiums and play in conditions which otherwise would be the closest thing on earth to the red planet and also point out to homosexuals that they are in imminent danger of prosecution. Qatar won and Australia lost and when it happened all those images came flashing back. You thought of great winners like Dawn Fraser and Lew Hoad and Rod Laver, the Waugh and the Chappell brothers and Warne and McGrath and Ponting and you saw the racing of the America's Cup off Fremantle and how brilliantly the young sons of immigrants responded to the coaching of Guus Hiddink that carried them to the World Cup in Germany, and a hard-fought game with the eventual champions, Italy. You saw that the Socceroos were back fighting at the highest level in the last World Cup. You saw all over again the force and the ambition of a proud and feisty and still ambitious sports nation. Then you looked at the score again, Qatar 14 Australia 1, and you considered what sport had come to under the guidance of a man like Sepp Blatter. He said what happened in Zurich on Thursday was about combative striving in the highest traditions of football. It wasn't that, it wasn't anything like it, and the nerve he had in saying it was quite stunning. It was taking the money and ignoring the kind of impetus in sport which Australia has so long brilliantly represented. Qatar!"
Derby County FC
Guest
Moonface Of course we are on your side. The whole system is ripe for corruption. Qatar2022 is niaive to say the least.
Derby County FC
Guest
Darwin Stubbie But in all reality the Qatar bid was nothing special either.
The Clint
Guest
Qatar 2022 I cannot take anything you say seriously. In another post on another article you state that Australia hosting a world cup would be nothing but a waste. But here you say Australia does deserve it before backing Qatar's 'everything has a price' world cup hosting rights. I'm not one of those "sore losers" you speak of, I have accepted we didn't win but will never accept that Qatar was the most deserving to host 2022.
SideShowBob
Roar Rookie
Agreed. It is clear that the sport has got a lot of work to do locally and much to prove internationally before we can really look FIFA square in the eye and ask that they entrust us with their cash cow.
Professor Rosseforp
Guest
I've said this elsewhere, but it may be worth repeating: a lot of Aussies are worried about a supposed alcohol ban -- but equally disturbing for European, Chinese and Middle Eastern fans are the smoking bans in Australia. Imagine not being able to have a ciggie at the game, at the restaurant, at the hotel, on the beach -- this is more unthinkable for these cultures than a booze ban!
UK Steve
Guest
I think the Asian Cup will highlight to the world why we didn't deserve the world cup. I expect to see half empty stadiums (being generous there) and just a general lack of enthusiasm for the whole thing. Australia is not a soccer nation and they don't deserve the world cup until they are.
The_Wookie
Roar Guru
Right to bid sure, right to win...well lets just say its doubtful. For a start your population cannot support it, that means importing even more cheap indo-pakistani-sri lankan labour. Good for the sub continent im sure. Your sole airport is a massive negative when dealing with the massive traffic expected for a world cup. 1. Money? The USA was the most profitable world cup ever held, may have been too close to the last time. 2. Stadium legacy means nothing. Absolutely nothing when it comes to hosting. No country has ever donated stadiums before and its likely none will ever do so again. 3. See the USA regarding income. 4. There is as much hope for peace in the middle east as there has been since 1948. I forget just how big a player Qatar is in the international peace process. Not one of your points is exclusive to Qatar. Not one of your points is even close to proof of why your postage stamp sized oven of a country that has even less of a soccer following than Australia should host. There are amoeba on saturn that have seen more soccer than Qatar. Note: that 95% of the soccer world, and a good many of us otuside it arent impressed, and the rest are just resigned to the inevitable "no using bolting the door after the milk has spilt".
sharminator
Guest
"We have invested too much into this process, it was the only chance for Australia to host the event and every single point was leading to Australia being successful. I cannot think of one reason, not one reason, why Qatar should host the event ahead of us, particularly in this time-frame." They got more votes buddy .. that is the one big reason why Qatar should host the World Cup ahead of Australia. Apart from that as many people have mentioned: Qatar has lots of money which lots of FIFA committee members and their countries will soon be enjoying Their legacy program involves rebuilding stadiums in poor countries They are close to Europe in terms of time and travel distance. I agree that it is suprising .. and seems to be a ridiculous decision .. and I am surprised that the US and Japanese bids lost. But for political and monetary reasons, you can understand how they won, and more to the point, how the Qatar bid outshone the Australian bid. What did the Australian bid have going for it? Population? 20 million ok it is 19 million more than Qatar ... but nothing like US, Japan or even Korea. Sporting Tradition: Football isnt the number 1, 2 or 3 or even 4 sport in Australia. Performance of Socceroos: Where I live in South America commentators laughed at the lack of skill Australia displayed in the World Cup. Timezone: Completely the wrong time zone for Europe and US TV markets Stadiums: Several stadiums which are not regularly used by soccer, but by other sports, will be upgraded, and then, not be used by football again. Legacy: An attempt to improve the popularity of soccer in a small but saturated sports market As for not accepting the bid result .. go right ahead .. we should not accept it ... the Socceroos should withdraw from international competition ... but no one in the rest of the world would actually care. A Football World cup in Australia is just as far fetched as a Football World Cup in Qatar ...
The Special One
Guest
Answering your questions 1. FIFA would have made more money from the USA bid. 2. Ill believe it when i see it. This was a ploy to convince FIFA they weren't building white elephants. 3. True. 4. If you seriously think that a World cup will bring peace between israel and the arab world you are seriously deluded. The sth koreans said that back in 2000 that it would solve the korean crisis but 10 years on, its as bad as ever. Id put my money on israel and iran nuking each other before peace. I also look forward to seeing an openly lesbian Israeli couple trying to enter Qatar to watch the world cup and seeing what happens.
Titus
Guest
So by bidding for the World Cup we were actually trying to "steal' it were we, is this because Qatar had already paid for it?
Moonface
Roar Guru
These are not "obstacles" - these are valid reasons why Qatar should not have won the bid. I'm not saying Australia has a "right", just that Qatar was the worst country to choose, and 99% of the world's football followers would agree. Apart form the enormous amount of money Qatar has to spend on a WC tournament, I'd be happy to say plenty about your "good points" if you'd care to point them out to me. I'm starting to suspect though, that you don't know much about football.
Qatar 2022
Guest
yes you mention all the obstacles Qatar has to overcome (some are not Qatar's fault it is smaller than australia) doesnt give australia the right to host the world cup just for that reason. oh u missed the good parts, or what?? u have nothing bad to say about them??? stadium legacy, building a better middle east, first middle east world cup, fifa revenue. ofcourse you have nothing to say, asia lets you join the asian confed with the help of qatari mohamed bin hamman and you repay asia by immediately trying to steal its next world cup!
Moonface
Roar Guru
Even the whinging Poms are on our side. http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/james-lawton-its-an-insult-to-australias-great-sporting-tradition-that-fifa-took-the-money-and-ran-with-qatar-2150856.html