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The Australian World Cup bid was naive at best, and stupid at worst. When I first heard that Qatar won the 2022 World Cup, I was surprised – especially knowing that Qatar has such a small population, none of the stadiums are built, and that it doesn’t have a particularly strong football culture.
Words that first came in to mind were “ridiculous”, “corruption” and “unbelievable”.
The incredulity is not so much about the fact that Australia lost, but that neither the USA, Australia, Japan or South Korea won – all countries with a proven track record in hosting international events, and that instead a country seemingly ill prepared to host any event of this size, was selected.
However, after a few days reading articles about the choice of World Cup hosts, I am no longer very surprised.
I think the naivety in the Australian bid was the idea that by trying to have the “technically best bid” Australia could win.
The reality is that FIFA politics and money are what decide who hosts a World Cup, and Australian football has neither influence in FIFA or money.
Have a look at the FIFA Executive committee that decides who hosts the World Cup. It consists of the following people:
Joseph S. Blatter – Switzerland
Julio Grondona – Argentina
Chung Mong Joon – South Korea
Jack Warner – Trinidad and Tobago
Ángel María Villar – Spain
Michel Platini – France
Reynald Temarii – Tahiti
Julio Grondona – Argentina
Michel D´Hooge – Belgium
Ricardo Terra Texeira – Brazil
Mohammed Bin Hamman – Qatar
Senes Erzik – Turkey
Chuck Blazer – USA
Nicolas Leoz – Paraguay
Worawi Wakudi – Thailand
Junju Ojura – Japan
Amos Adamu – Nigeria
Marios Leftikis – Cyprus
Jacques Anouma – Ivory Coast
Franz Beckenbauer – Germany
Rafael Salguero – Guatemala
Hany Abo Rida – Egypt
Vitaly Mutko – Russia
Jerome Valcke – France
Out of all those people, the Japanese, Korean, Qatari, and US delegates would obviously vote for their own bids.
This reduces the number of possible first round supporters for Australia from four of a possible 24 to 20.
For political and cultural reasons you would probably expect Egypt and Turkish delegates to vote for Qatar, Thailand to vote for Japan or Korea, and the Trinidadian for the USA, leaving 16 delegates.
The Qatari idea of sending stadiums or financial assistance to them was probably attractive to the three African delegates, so they could be counted for Qatar, leaving 13 delegates.
The South American delegates tend to vote in a block (I live in Paraguay and the CONMEBOL delegates announced in a press conference here that they would vote for Spain in 2018). I doubt they would have any reason to vote for Australia, especially when other countries could offer them far more than Australia, such as international games, money etc, so we are left with 10 delegates.
The same goes for the Honduran delegate, leaving nine.
Russia, Belgium, England and Spain were all in the running for 2018 and you would expect their delegates to do a “you vote for me and I´ll vote for you” deal with delegates from 2022 countries. Unfortunately Australia has no delegate on the executive committee so we could not do this, leaving five.
So before even considering how good bids were, Australia really only had a chance of support from four or so delegates – those from Germany, Cyprus, France and Switzerland.
I think the Australian bid was naive from the start. It assumed that by putting together a good bid, politics and money could be overcome.
Considering that the 2018 and 2022 bids were run at the same time, and that Australia has no member on the FIFA Executive, I don’t think we ever had any real chance of securing a World Cup.
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