- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
There were two telling facts that emerged from the FIFA vote on the hosting rights to the World Cup in 2018 and 2022. First, that Russia won the rights to the 2018 tournament. Second, that Australia gained only one vote for its bid to host the 2022 tournament.
What this this tells me is that Australia is too small in a geo-political sense to have any influence in the Machiavellian, power and money-obsessed of football politics. This is a fatal flaw to Australia’s hopes of ever exercising any influence or power in world football. This flaw is exacerbated by the fact that we are part of the English-speaking world bloc.
FIFA, along with the United Nations and virtually all the other branches (tentacles?) of its organisation like UNESCO and the IOC among other institutions, is essentially an anti-English-speaking power bloc. For us, brought up in the traditions of English and American history, the English-speaking tradition is one that has civilised great chunks of the globe. But for those being civilised, the process was more akin to colonialism and exploitation than any high-minded venture intended to improve the lot of those peoples involved in this history.
The IOC vote to give an Olympic Games to Brazil rather than the United States, and now FIFA’s decision to give the World Cup tournament to Russia, that inhospitable nation, and to Qatar, which will have to build stadiums underground to allow spectators and players some relief from the searing heat, represent the hostility to the English-speaking giants like the US and the UK at its most virulent.
These votes, like similar votes in the UN, represent the revenge of the colonised and the marginalised.
They also represent the reality of the politics where so-called third world countries, because of their numbers and their groupings, can influence the outcome of most votes at international gatherings.
More specifically regarding the Australian bid, it was based on a false argument. That argument was that Australia was part of Asia. Asia is the growing powerhouse of world trade and development. Therefore, if FIFA supported the Australian bid, it was giving itself a ride on the wave of the future.
When I was at school (admittedly too many decades ago to bear remembering) we were taught about Asia Minor, an area that embraces Turkey, the Middle East and the Gulf States (which were tiny fishing ports at that time). There is nothing minor about this region now. It is an economic powerhouse and a political powder keg.
FIFA likes to see itself as a sporting and more effective version of the UN. Perhaps the Nobel Peace Prize is a better analogy. The World Cup was given to South Africa this year as a mark of that nation’s emergence (more theoretical than actual) as a rainbow coalition community.
The politics behind Russia winning the hosting rights to World Cup 2018 is that this country is not England.
Qatar is the first Muslim country to be given a global event. This is a hugely symbolic/political gesture on the part of FIFA. It elevates FIFA to a level of international peace-making and reconciliation (hopefully) that has been beyond the UN and the great powers. As George Orwell pointed out, sport is war by other methods. There are commentators who are making the case a Qatar World Cup will be an effective weapon against Al-Qaeda and the worst excesses of Islamic darkness.
Tunku Varadarajan, writing for The Beast, describes FIFA’s decision as ‘transformative, electrifying’ and describes the tournaments of 2018 and 2022 as ‘revolutionary World Cups.’ He points out, too, that ‘if Israel Qatar will not be able to deny it the right to play, for the first time, on Arab soil. Think of that.’
In the light of these huge geo-political considerations involved with Qatar, particularly, winning the World Cup 2022 hosting rights, it is probably remarkable that insignificant Australia got even one vote.
Spiro Zavos predicted Qatar would win the 2022 World Cup hosting vote in June 2010.