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There were two things that caught the eye this week in the world of football; one obvious, the other less so, but equally worrying for football fans.
Four Corners’ expose of Australia’s bid for the 2018 World Cup on the ABC reminded us, again, of the nefarious process of wooing and entertaining prospective voters from FIFA’s executive committee.
Though the program focused more on the failings of Australia’s bid for the Cup, it was nonetheless distressing to see how comfortable these men find themselves in their current positions.
They are the ones who can drive change in the world game, starting at the top, and create a more democratic approach, but the chances of such change taking place look extremely slim.
The opposite is true at the moment. How else could Russia and Qatar have been awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting rights?
There are serious questions about how Russia’s infrastructure will cope with the influx of hundreds of thousands of fans from around the world.
A significant culture of racism from within Russia’s football community, meanwhile, was barely mentioned in Russia’s bid (a powerful anecdotal account of the abuse black players received in Russia can be found here.
And Qatar? A country whose capital city averages a temperature of 40 degrees in the summer is a mind-boggling choice from an organisation that claims to look after the well-being of its players and aims for the highest quality international football.
No amount of artificial cooling clouds or air-conditioned indoor stadiums can hide the fact that this was a dismal choice for a World Cup.
How FIFA selects the host nations for a World Cup is a more long-term issue.
But something else caught the eye this week, too: in the first half of QPR and Newcastle United’s 0-0 draw on Monday evening (a match more entertaining than the score would suggest), Shaun Wright-Phillips, the QPR winger, ran into a Newcastle player and fell over, well away from the ball.
Wright-Phillips felt he had been fouled, and ran screaming at the referee who correctly allowed the game to play on without pause.
Wright-Phillips then continued to abuse the referee for at least two minutes. The commentators laughed it off, and the crowd didn’t react at all, so commonplace have these histrionic displays become in today’s game.
It was a particularly bad look in comparison with the Rugby World Cup, an event at which only the team captain can speak to the referee, and severe punishments are dealt to those who show disrespect to the man with the whistle.
So far it has been a tournament of entertaining matches, and good sportsmanship from all of the players. Just a simple tweak of football’s rules could have seen Wright-Phillips given a yellow card for his rudeness, and a lesson for the other 21 players on the pitch.
But somehow, one gets the feeling that any positive changes to the game from the powers that be at FIFA are a long way off.
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