Now that the wildly successful Russia World Cup is but a happy fading memory, the football world’s attention has gone back to intensely disliking the thought of where the next edition of the greatest show on earth will be hosted.
Ever since Qatar were awarded the rights to host the 2022 World Cup in December 2010, football has largely failed to get its collective hive mind around the concept.
That’s not too difficult to understand given the incredibly controversial nature of the bidding process, the “brown paper bag” stories, the utter unsuitability of Qatar as a host country according to FIFA’s own criteria, the insanity of hosting a World Cup in 50-degree heat (since solved by moving the tournament to December) – in short, pretty much everything about the decision has been debated and rejected by the football community in the ensuing seven and a half years. It is the story that simply won’t go away.
What has been plainly obvious is that FIFA has been more than willing to move the goalposts in order to justify the executive committee’s decision on that cold winter’s night in Zurich.
The moving of the tournament’s dates in itself represents a radical shift, and it’s worth noting that Australia’s flawed bid might well have been more appreciably backed had they known the winning country could host a World Cup in November and December rather than fitting a schedule around the demands of three other football codes in June and July.
Despite the incessant calls for Qatar to be stripped of hosting rights due to the hugely suspect nature of the bid process, FIFA have stayed loyal to the tiny Persian Gulf country, concluding that no corruption was evident after investigating the bidding process itself.
The past five years have seen the downfall of a number of key FIFA personnel from that era, including former FIFA president Sepp Blatter. In all, 11 of the 22 members who voted on the 2022 World Cup hosting rights have been fined, suspended, banned for life or prosecuted for corruption.
(Photo by Baptiste Fernandez/Icon Sport via Getty Images)
Let that settle for a moment. Half of the committee responsible for awarding Qatar the 2022 tournament lost their position due to wrongdoing, yet FIFA doggedly sticks with Qatar and continues to declare that the bidding process was free of any tainting. Their loyalty to their next hosts is rock-solid because, let’s face it, they have to be loyal.
FIFA are in a classic catch-22 with this. They can’t take the tournament off Qatar due to corruption in the bid process because to do so means they – or at least an older version of their administration – admit to the corruption themselves. They are seen to be sticking with the hosts because the alternative is to go down with the ship.
I have said previously that FIFA could not possibly take the World Cup off Qatar for this very reason but that at some point in time, if the heat (no pun intended) generated by the decision became too much, they’d find an alternative reason, one that would annul the process without implicating them in it.
Enter the ‘smear campaign’ story.
Allegations have come to light in the past fortnight about Qatar’s bid team taking highly illegal steps to destabilise the bids of its rivals from USA and Australia. The allegations were made by England’s Sunday Times and the source was a whistleblower on the 2022 bid team, with the information not being made available to FIFA’s original corruption investigation.
The allegations, which have been well-documented on The Roar, include paying a PR agency and former CIA operatives to disseminate fake propaganda about bids from the USA and Australia and paying a university professor $9000 to write a damning report on the economic cost of a World Cup to the United States. There was also the alleged recruitment of journalists and bloggers to promote negative stories in the USA, Australia and international media.
That’s pretty funny, really. Qatar could have saved their money in Australia – the AFL media did it for nothing.
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The allegations are in direct contravention of bidding rules, but we’ve seen that these have been relaxed in the past. However, it does give FIFA a smoking gun to use as an out if the allegations prove to be true.
Crucially, these allegations do not implicate FIFA in any wrongdoing, only the Qatari bid.
As such, if they are proven to be true, they give FIFA the chance to destroy Qatar’s dreams without being caught in the same bed. As cynical as such a decision would be, if FIFA are privately flagging in their support for their 2022 hosts, they might soon have the means to save face with an about-face.
Arto
Guest
Agree with you 100%, Ben.... All anyone needs to do is read the opening pages of Bonita Mersiade recent book to realise that this is a complex and somewhat dark issue - agendas are at play, LOTs of money involved, & some very powerful people outside of football have invested more than just finances to get what they want. I'm somewhat sceptical of the ST article, tbh ... Not because I support the hosting of the WC in Qatar, but because there's very little hard evidence referenced in it. There are a number of people who stand to benefit from Qatar being stripped of the WC (including our own Frank Lowy) so I want more evidence & information brought to light before I pass judgement...
apaway
Roar Guru
That is the "official line." The reality is that FIFA were concerned about Colombia's preparation for at least 18 months before the decision to relinquish the tournament. They jumped before they could be pushed.
Ben of Phnom Penh
Roar Guru
"conforms to my belief", sorry. The edit function appears to have taken a holiday.
Ben of Phnom Penh
Roar Guru
Once again I urge caution regarding such anonymous information being fed from the region. The Saudi led political, economic and cultural blockade of Qatar has resulted in disinformation campaigns from both sides. Personally I am of the opinion that the entire voting process was an utter sham, however just because this recent revelation confirms my belief does not mean it is correct.
HardcorePrawn
Roar Guru
"There was also the alleged recruitment of journalists and bloggers to promote negative stories in the USA, Australia and international media." There was also the alleged recruitment of journalists and bloggers to promote negative stories in the USA, Australia and international media" I wouldn't mind knowing a bit more about this, is there any concrete evidence of this? If true it would certainly explain why some of the Melbourne media seem to highlight any incident at an A-league match, while ignoring similar (or sometimes worse) incidents at Australian Rules games.
SM
Guest
Colombia weren't stripped. The government stated that they couldn't afford to host the tournament and withdrew their rights as a result.
apaway
Roar Guru
Not if they were found to have contravened rules regarding their bid. (I know, I know, rules and FIFA and all that)
At work
Roar Rookie
Yeah I could see that, many European countries would quite easily handle the WC with a few years notice, or it could be shared among a few countries considering the closeness of countries and general small scale of Europe compared to Russia, or the USA for example.
apaway
Roar Guru
I was thinking of where the WC might end up if Qatar was stripped of it, and the most logical place is back in Europe. There is a precedent to this; Colombia were stripped of the 1986 hosting rights 3 years out from the tournament start and Mexico ended up as hosts.
At work
Roar Rookie
As much at I may dislike a country, their ethics or the way they went about 'winning' the hosting bid for the World Cup, I will never boycott it. There's no way I'd give up the chance to watch it.
At work
Roar Rookie
It's the only plausible outcome AR
At work
Roar Rookie
All in all it doesn't really matter, the USA have got the rights to the 2026 WC so they couldn't be given the 2022 cup. Australia aren't in a position to do it at this late stage, that only leaves a combined Japan/Korea finals which I don't think is that deserving since they only had it in 2002. Although I'd probably still prefer Japan wins it back over Qatar
MQ
Guest
At no stage has FIFA shown a wilingness to look too hard into what was a farcical bid from go to whoah. The Qatar bid didn't even meet some essential criteria, so it should not even have got past first base. When it was allowed to reach the very final stages of selection, we all knew the fix was in. That there has been a semi-overhaul at the top in FIFA may have given a move to strip Qatar of the world cup some impetus...but...in reality, the current regime is too closely aligned to the previous regime, they all are all peas out of the same pod. There is no way there will be any change at this point (and as if the payment of a measly $9,000 to an economics professor to write about standard economic doctrine represents some sort of smoking gun - you kind of wish the Australian taxpayer had got away with paying the shysters we engaged a measly $90,000 rather tens of millions of dollars).
Christo the Daddyo
Guest
Wouldn't Qatar hit FIFA with a gigantic lawsuit if they had the World Cup pulled from them at this stage?
reuster75
Guest
Did you boycott Russia as their bid was also proven to have been corrupt? Did you boycott Germany as it's also been shown their bid was corrupt (if you don't believe me google Andrew Jennings who has written a lot about corruption in FIFA and has the evidence to back it up)? Would you have boycotted a world cup in Australia as it's also been proven our bid was corrupt? All countries that entered the bidding process knew what the 'rules' were and all of them 'complied' with those 'rules' so there can be no cause for complaint about Qatar hosting the next world cup.
Dan
Guest
if they don't move this away i am going to boycott it and i hope the players do as well
AR
Guest
So Qatar was behind THAT video..?!! I knew it!
NUFCMVFC
Roar Guru
Wouldn't be surprised It's farcical on so many levels Even if people believed the AC Stadium fairytales Having lots of tourists for a Sport with a notorious drinking culture at WC's in a deeply Conservative country = recipe for PR disaster, and that's putting it in the milder time of year. Mid-year as envisioned would have seen lots of people getting severely unwell due to heat conditions outdoors Then there's the fact it's a City-state. Any viable Mid-East bid would have had to have been a joint Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait bid etc