The run up to FIFA World Cup votes have never been a particularly edifying spectacle but the race to be awarded the 2018 and 2022 tournaments has possibly exceeded previously low standards. Be it the corruption allegations, the collusion and horse-trading, designer handbags, press hatchet jobs or attacks on press freedoms - and possibly more that will yet emerge - the process has been anything but a shining advert for FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s football family.
FIFA’s response to this has been deeply predictable and depressing, and the thought of last minute frantic meetings between Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, Prince William, David Beckham and FIFA Vice-President Jack Warner doubly so. With the vote and results edging ever closer, my ambivalence towards England securing the World Cup grows. In truth, I would rather the press unleashed their full armoury against FIFA and rooted out the deep-set corruption and malpractice, and cleaned up the beautiful game. If that means England again miss out on the major tournament, then this is a price worth paying.
To seasoned FIFA-watchers, this whole charade has been predictable. Sepp Blatter may have been attempting to secure his own legacy and future beyond whenever he quits or is ousted from office by bunching the votes for 2018 and 2022 together, but it was clear, in a culture of horse-trading and palm-greasing, that this was always going to lead to a high chance of collusion between the bidders when it came to securing votes.
FIFA’s ethics committee have ruled that there has been no collusion between the Spain-Portugal and Qatari bids, despite persistent rumours and the note Angel Maria Villar Llona of Spain passed to Mohammed Bin Hammam of Qatar saying “Congratulation, vamos a ganar” (transation: Congratulations, we are going to win). FIFA executive committe member Chuck Blazer suggested this referred to being cleared by the ethics committee rather than the bid to host the World Cup.
And then there was the suspension and fine for executive committee members Reynald Temarii and Amos Adamu (the latter’s fine, incidentally, was the same amount as FIFA fined Nigerian side Niger Tornadoes for their goalkeeper wearing the wrong shirt during a match) after both were filmed by the Sunday Times allegedly trying to sell their World Cup votes. FIFA may have punished them, but it’s clear where the anger from football’s governing body is aimed.
After announcing their punishments, ethics committee chair Claudio Sulser turned his ire on the Sunday Times. “When you have rumours, you can sell more newspapers,” said Sulser. “But human nature prefers to talk about evil things. But the fair play prize, what do you think? How many journalists would get the fair play prize,” he asked, without any apparent trace of irony.
Without the Sunday Times, there would have been no investigation, no evidence of corruption, no fines or bans for Temarii and Adamu. This is not the Mail on Sunday setting up a hapless Lord Triesman; this is proper investigative journalism, which doesn’t even seem to tell the whole story. Rather than using this as an opportunity to clean up its house, FIFA turned its guns on the newspaper for having the temerity to do its job.
Never mind that the Sunday Times had apparently uncovered serious corruption, this was all the paper’s fault. And, what’s more, the stories, the hints and more started to appear in other outlets suggesting that England’s bid would suffer as a result of taking FIFA to task.
This pressure has been ramped up even further ahead of the BBC’s Panorama programme, which is being broadcast a few days ahead of the vote. Andy Anson, chair of England’s 2018 bid, has called it unpatriotic, seemingly confusing a commercial bid with a war and suggesting that any suggestion of wrongdoing by FIFA should be brushed to one side - that winning the World Cup trumps a free and independent media.
Had FIFA and the bidding team had their way, and Panorama had been dropped, then they’d have succeeded where countless governments, politicians and those like Trafigura had failed, and suppressed a highly negative story. It may have won England the World Cup and convinced FIFA that the media could be cowed. The media in this country may not be angels themselves, but, without resorting to misquoting Voltaire, at least they have the right to report without fear of reprisals. That alone is a principle worth fighting for.
Contrast with one of England’s main rivals. As Owen Gibson writes, “In FIFA’s alternate reality, Russia’s crackdown on free speech is seen as preferable to the prospect of facing the British media for eight years.” This should tell you all you need to know.
If Jack Warner, FIFA Vice-President and CONCACAF President, really is being serious that Panorama is an irrelevance then we shouldn’t even need to discuss this issue. And the fact the England are depending so heavily on Warner for votes is one of the most disheartening aspects of the whole mucky process.
This is a man who, as the Swiss Ramble reminds us, made roughly $1m along with his family from controlling Trinidad and Tobago’s allocation of tickets for the 2006 World Cup before selling them on at inflated prices. Warner’s son, Daryan, was fined $1m by FIFA’s executive committee for this, although, to date, only $250,000 has been paid.
Warner has also still not paid the Trinidad and Tobago players from 2006, despite agreeing a deal whereby the players would get 50% of the money made from their participation in Germany. Warner claimed that only TT$ 350,000 was left after expenses were deducted from a total of TT$18m. Independent arbitration revealed that this total was actually closer to TT$173m. The players are no closer to seeing their money.
And it’s also worth remembering that Warner insisted that a frail Nelson Mandela should visit Trinidad and Tobago if South Africa wanted to guarantee the CONCACAF President’s vote for the 2010 World Cup. This was despite medical advice that said such a journey could kill Mandela.
FIFA themelves also did rather well out of South Africa 2010. Their general secretary, Jerome Valcke, boasted that FIFA increased its income by 50% in South Africa, compared to Germany in 2006. Much of this came from securing tax free status from the South African government for all FIFA-designated sites during the World Cup. FIFA made an estimated £2.1bn from this year’s tournament. South Africa made a loss.
It appears that 2018 and 2022 will be roughly the same. The BBC reported earlier in the year that one of the conditions laid down for potential hosts is that the entire event should be free of tax for FIFA. So much for economic benefits.
When you put it all together, gaining the World Cup is not a pleasant process. The attacks on press freedom, the alleged corruption, the murky waters of the voting process, the great and the good of this country having to acquiesce to Jack Warner’s whims, the tax issue - all of these are uncomfortable bedfellows with what we’re told is a global celebration of football.
Simon Jenkins argues excellently that if England fail to secure the tournament, it will have been lost in a “noble cause”, while Ian King says:
“It wouldn’t be unreasonable to suggest that if they were somehow to win the bid, the England team should immediately hand the award back to FIFA and say “No thanks”, but the chances of that happening are more or less exactly zero.”
I couldn’t agree more with them both. It’s not that I don’t want a World Cup in England. On the contrary, I would love to experience the joy of being able to watch world class football in the country I live in. If England don’t get the 2018 tournament, then by the next realistic date England could host the tournament, I will be pushing 50. It would be an altogether different experience watching at that age - assuming, that is, that England actually gets awarded a tournament in my lifetime.
But if not getting the tournament means this country’s press remains free to investigate wrongdoing at an organisation seeming beyond normal jurisdiction, and that this results in corruption being swept out of the beautiful game - giving us a clean FIFA - then that, to me, is far more important than winning the vote. It would be a price well worth paying.
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Tags: FIFA, Jack Warner, Panorama, Sepp Blatter, Sunday Times, World Cup 2018
“at least they have the right to report without fear of reprisals” No they don’t, hence the silence on the recent criminality regarding phone tapping, having to rely on an American newspaper to pursue it. Look at all the investigations into the corruption amongst British press barons. Good luck with finding any, they’re like the masons.
The FIFA delegates were set up. How many journalists if they had a bag of drugs and free women or cash waved under their nose would say no? It’s a morally dubious practice to put it mildly.
Would Murdoch have spiked a bid by his two countries, the USA and Australia, in a similar manner? Maybe his Australian media did a similar investigation into the IOC pre the Sydney bid, but I missed it.
I think this is why the rest of the world wrinkles its nose when ‘we’ do these exposes, because our press, football and government are corrupt themselves.
The bids are about what you can do for the delegates’ countries and them personally. If you don’t like it don’t bid. Maybe those bidding should have factored in our media before they began? But I can’t believe it’s the defining factor anyway.
Cheers Gary.
I’ve adopted a pragmatic ‘anyone but Russia’ attitude to 2018. At least Spain and Portugal are not riddled with corruption, hooliganism and racism. What would really leave a sour taste would be a Qatar win for 2022, despite its bid book being panned by the FIFA tech committee.
One reason for optimism is the knowledge that FIFA ought to be concerned about even more invasive investigation should the vote carry even a whiff of political horse-trading. If England lose the World Cup because we are neither good enough at corruption nor at preventing honourable journalists from exposing it within FIFA, that’s fine.
kt, will due respect, I think you’ve got a few straw men in there. Please tell me if I’m reading your comment wrong, but it seems your argument is that as journalism also suffers from corruption, then they shouldn’t be reporting on corruption elsewhere? Surely that can’t be right. And also you seem to be saying in your last paragraph that any country with a free and active press that might want to scrutinise FIFA, shouldn’t bid because it might upset the organisation? Sorry, again, I think that’s plain wrong.
“The FIFA delegates were set up.” Do you think the Sunday Times would have gone after them without a story there? Seriously, fishing expeditions like this are not as common as you’d think in the broadsheet and broadcast media (certainly with the latter there’s a VERY strong code against that kind of thing). And clearly FIFA thinks there’s some kind of guilt, otherwise they wouldn’t have suspended and fined them.
With regard to the “fear of reprisals” line, I was thinking more along the lines of Russia, where exposing wrongdoing gives you a very good chance of losing your life. Here, we may not like necessarily what the press write, but, by God, I’ll defend their write to print it. Much as I hate being one of those who invokes the “freedom of speech” argument (usually when somebody’s taken down a stupdenously idiotic comment on a private forum), this is a genuine freedom of speech issue. A private body shouldn’t be allowed to stop a free press from printing or broadcasting allegations that might hurt this body.
I would agree that journalism sometimes (often even) crosses the boundaries of what is right. But there are laws and balances in place (although not all of them effective). With the phone tapping scandal, there were criminal charges in the first instance and, credit to the Guardian, some places are reporting on it. There does appear to be progress, albeit slowly. Which is better than no progress at all. And there are things like libel laws - if the stories are false and malicious, then FIFA should sue. I doubt they will though.
As an aside, that’s a huge sweeping generalisation that everything’s corrupt. In FIFA, there are some good people working genuinely for the good of the game. The organisation has done good work around the globe. But then you also have the likes of Warner. Enough said.
At risk of associating myself with the media brush, I work in the media. I trained as a journalist. I’ve done a lot of journalism, including current affairs. I’ve know a lot of other journalists. Believe it or not, most of them are there because they enjoy doing the job, they enjoy reporting on stories and they feel strongly about holding the powers that be to account. I have seen and heard of some very dubious stories and pratices. But in my own experience, these are the exception, not the rule.
I was being a bit devil’s advocate, but if you view any foreign media, our holier than thou attitude gets ups people’s noses, it’s one reason we don’t win tournaments.
I think our football, media and politics is corrupt (if not as bad as Russia) certainly in the way it uses power.
But back to the point, everyone knows FIFA has been rotten for years, will the British media change this? No chance. I’m not saying we shouldn’t investigate it at all, but what the Britsh media choose to investigate and when is dubious.
You seem to be suggesting the process is so grubby we shouldn’t bother. I say the rest of the world could point a finger back at how we do things, who owns our football clubs and the ethics of the industry as a whole and say who are you to talk.
You could call Dave Richards a bonzai Jack Warner.
Great post. I think that the attempt to finally try and expose the corruption of FIFA ought to rank above winning the bid to host the World Cup. The corruption within football’s governing body is one of sport’s worst kept secrets. There is the quiet acceptance that FIFA is subject to corruption in various forms and on a number of levels and yet journalists often fear targeting it. It is the great debate about the role of journalism; is it a watchdog for society or a lapdog for bigger corporations and organisations?
If England failed to succeed in their bid because newspapers or documentaries have tried to expose a fraction of FIFA’s dodgey dealings then that is a price worth paying. In a democratic country, what the independent press chooses to publish or broadcast should have no implications on their country’s bids. Perhaps, like yourself Gary, I am being too idealistic. As a sports writer and trainee journalist though I am already getting a sense of not only the scale of FIFA’s corruption, but also journalists’ unwillingness to expose it as they see the risk as being too great. This issue is, in my opinion, of far greater importance than who hosts the 2018 or 2022 World Cups.
I do want to have my say on this one, but first: I’ve got no idea what’s happened to the iffy line breaks in the first few paragraphs, so apologies for that.
On the issue itself, my views are pretty strong. I suspect that FIFA is rotten to the core and if I had my way it would be exposed, charges brought against officials where appropriate and thoroughly cleaned up from top to bottom. It’s a pipe dream, but if England is the country that stands up to them and something is actually done then I’d be quite proud.
Although I share Gary’s suspicion of and distaste for the organisation, I do differ slightly regarding this week specifically. In spite of its implications and the shambolic way it would have come about, very little in life would make me happier than to live through a World Cup in my own country.
Would I delay Panorama? No. Would I have wanted the Sunday Times to lay off? No. But something tells me that when the announcement is made on Thursday and we haven’t got it, I won’t feel very much like it was a price worth paying (even though I know deep down that it could be if someone really goes for FIFA at long last).
Scratch that, fixed it.
kt, it’s taken me an age to repond because I couldn’t stop laughing at your Dave Richards comparison! Genius!
I would agree England doesn’t do itself any favours with it’s attitude to, well, everything.
I’m definitely not suggesting the process is so grubby that we shouldn’t bother. I’d love nothing more for England to first of all enter the World Cup and do things by the book, and for the English media to investigate FIFA thoroughly. I don’t think it’ll happen, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t bother.
Don’t even get me started on our own football clubs. There are equally as many aspects that could be looked into but aren’t.
Dom, nowt wrong with being idealistic. I’d love to see the World Cup over here, but if I was offered that or FIFA weeding out corruption, I’d take the latter every time.
I just want to say great article. I may not be involved in journalism but you have to admire when journalists or a news organization does some real investigation and reports accurate information, regardless of the consequences. If only more journalists held this principle maybe we wouldn’t be inundated with the vast amounts of speculation on most news topics.
Nothing would please me more than to see FIFA exposed, Jack Warner especially seeing as he represents my federation, but considering how much money and power they control, just like most multinational corporations, I doubt anything will come of it.
As to whether or not losing the World Cup bid is the price to pay for proper investigative journalism, I’ll let you Brits debate that point.