Those Nasty People At FIFA

The trouble is that it looks like sour grapes, the fact that England didn’t win in their bid to host the football World Cup, losing heavily to both Russia and Qatar. Lord Triesman claims that at least 4 FIFA representatives wanted a “bribe” in return for their vote, and a couple of representatives have already been caught and suspended for taking bribes.

Is it really any surprise that the whole thing could be bought? Russia and Qatar are major oil producers and up-and-coming world economies with big budgets and apparently few scruples. There’s even talk of English football breaking away from FIFA altogether due to the allegations of bribery and the apparent lack of interest from FIFA to investigate the claims.

I’ve been saying for a while that both FIFA and UEFA are dinosaurs in the world of football, refusing to move with the times as the sums of money involve spiral out of all proportion. Football will implode at some point for two reasons:

• The sums of money, both wages and transfer fees are unsustainable meaning that a lot of clubs will eventually collapse financially.
• The footballing authorities refuse to listen to what the people (the people who ultimately generate all the money for the game) actually want.

If I’m totally honest I have lost interest in most football. I follow “my” team, Brighton & Hove Albion, but that’s it. I actually prefer the lower league football to the Premier League due to the fact that the players actually still play the game rather than trying to con the referee or get an opponent punished, inter-mingled with moments of genius with a ball at their feet.

Why England felt that they could win the hosting of the World Cup without bribes only goes to show their naivety about how these things work. It’s all well and good to moan after the event but it looks a little pathetic since the bid, although strong (by all accounts), was blown out of the water. The better thing to do would have been to win the bid and then claim that bribes were required, or persuade someone involved in the Russian or Qatari bids to spill the beans.

Football is reputedly the sport of the people – if only the powers that be would remember that occasionally.