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Congratulations to the bold people behind the Qatar bid that won the right to host the 2022 World Cup. The taste this morning is bitter and tinged with a touch of sadness for an opportunity to give the game in Australia a massive shot in the arm.
So why did we lose? Were we simply screwed over at the nexus of football and politics by powerful people with hidden and questionable agendas? Is the result a indictment on those who run the world game or is it simply a bold move to take the game to the Middle East?
The governance issues within FIFA are for another discussion, but we do well to look in our own backyard first. There were matters we could influence and we should stop and reflect on just how our bid stacked up and what it means for the future. Minus the rose-coloured glasses.
This of course is with the benefit of hindsight. I readily admit that I too held optimism for the bid. Would I have dragged myself out of bed at 1am if I didn’t have a sliver of hope, however unfounded, that we might just pull this thing off? No. Naive? Indeed.
Legacy, what legacy?
I was among the crowd at Gabba during the 2000 Olympics watching the class and might of a young Brazil take on the technically adept Japanese.
By pure chance I was seated near the throng on Brazilian fans who were singing and dancing their way through the match. At one point their bouncing caused the tier they were standing on the flex a little too much and it split the glass of the members section below. The fun police moved in and their drums and horns were promptly removed.
Boos rained down on the stunned security guards who were not used to any continual celebration in the stand during a sporting match. That stadium, to the best of my memory, has not been used for football since it was renovated for the Olympics.
So it would have been with the World Cup.
There were three new stadia in the bid: Perth, Western Sydney where, we can only assume, a A-League team would have been rushed in to the competition to fill the void, and Canberra, also sans A-League presence.
The AFL and cricket would have been beneficiaries of upgrades to the MCG, Geelong’s Cardinia Park, Adelaide Oval, the Gold Coast stadium and the new-build in Perth. Rugby league, and to a lesser extent union, would have enjoyed seeing Townsville and two Sydney stadia upgrades and a new venue in Canberra.
That’s not a legacy; that’s football on borrowed time and money.
Again.
Paying the cost to the boss
We were squarely in the sights when AFC president Mohammed Bin Hammam announced that his home nation would be bidding for the cup. In the latest batch of diplomatic cables released on whistleblower website Wikileaks has taught us anything, it’s that powerful people spend a lot of time and money telling hiding their real opinions of other powerful people.
Much less reveal their actions.
The nexus of football and politics is a cruel world where ends justify the means, however much we may feel aggrieved at the process.
The Australian bid won a single vote. Our weakness was that we did not have an executive committee member of our own and despite high-priced lobbyists to get us access to the inner sanctum we were politically clobbered.
We took a gamble of putting up our bid despite the boss of our confederation no doubt working the room to see the threat nullified (I’m not at this stage suggesting that was done improperly). We were ripe for the picking and picked we were.
It’s about the game, stupid
This is not a critique of the cringe-worthy and clichéd-ridden video shown on the eve of the vote. We’d be foolish to think that lost us the bid. It was mere window dressing.
But it’s content was revealing in the overall approach of the bid in the lack knowledge by those hired to push it about the game in this country, its history, its people and its value to those who have followed it through its “terrifying lows, its dizzying highs, the creamy middles…”
Where was their story.
We recently celebrated the fifth anniversary of John Aloisi’s magic penalty that catapulted us to the 2006 World Cup.
It still sends shivers down our spines and no doubt if it had been told in the context of the pioneers who made it first in 1974 through to the images of a distraught Tony Vidmar after the 1997 loss to Iran, it would have no doubt touched the football heart of executive committee members.
We told a tourist story.
Frankly, who cares. People know that story. What they don’t know, is our passionate, proud and troubled football story. It was an opportunity missed.
Where to now, Cap’n?
Despite the naysayers and the plateau in crowds (lets wait for the end of season numbers before we label it a decline), the quality of football in the A-League is at an all time high.
This is a game that at times has done a better job of self-harm than any outside the game. Losing the bid won’t kill the game but continual neglect of domestic league will.
We have moved from Oceania to the realm of the big boys. We played, we got bruised. Its harsh lesson for football during its maturation, but learn we must.
To borrow the words of US football great Alexei Lalas: “The sky is not falling,” he said. “You dust yourself up. Onward and upward. It has never been an easy road for … Soccer. This just continues that.”
How to respond to the setback?
Get out there, support the game in numbers.
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