Source of England’s Votes Should Douse Righteous Anger – Why England’s Bid Really Failed

The fall out and recriminations from yesterday’s selection of Russia to host the 2018 World Cup began immediately.

The BBC and other media were full of angry pieces lambasting the FIFA delegates. Fans however also turned on their own media, especially the Sunday Times and Panorama.

Lord Triesman whose accusations against the Russian bid sparked the England bid’s first crisis seemed to escape, although some fans grudgingly admitted that the scenes of fan misbehaviour immediately following the Birmingham derby hadn’t helped.

Russia Wins 2018 World Cup

But mostly the reaction was an orgy of insinuation against foreigners conspiring against them. The search term “FIFA Corruption” was being entered into keyboards all over England with many of them arriving on this website.

Ken Bates called for top European nations to break away from FIFA.

It subsequently turned out that the English Football Association (FA) had been promised at least five votes. When it was revealed they only got two, their media went in search of those who had betrayed them.

Bid Chief Executive Andy Anson said:

“I’m not going to beat around the bush – individual members promised to vote for us and didn’t clearly. It’s disappointing when people promise you something and don’t deliver.”

This morning’s revelations that their two votes came from Geoff Thompson and Issa Hayatou however throw different light on the indignation.

Geoff Thompson is the chairman of the England bid, and was part of the five-strong team which delivered England’s World Cup bid book to FIFA in May. He replaced the disgraced Lord Triesman after he was forced to resign his post.

Let us repeat that. Thompson was Chairman of the England bid, yet he was one of the FIFA voting members. It is reasonable to assume there was no way Holland/Belgium was going to get his vote no matter how strong the bids. Is it unreasonable to ask why Thompson didn’t recuse himself from voting once he replaced Triesman?

At best there is a conflict of interest, at worst there is a vote that simply cannot be won by the best bid. So the English critics are right. There are some votes that even the excellence of the bids cannot win. Your man is one of them. Needless to say, there has been insignificant outrage about this in the English media.

Thompson is not alone. The President of the Korean Football Federation Mong Joon Chung, Angel Maria Villar Llona (Spain), Michel D’Hooghe (Belgium), Mohammed Bin Hammam (Qatar), Chuck Blazer (USA), Junji Ogura (Japan) and Vitaly Mutko (Russia) were also on the voting committee and represented nations applying to host.

That’s a total of eight votes out of 22 that were never going to be swung by any presentations or Technical Reports, hotel capacity or stadia.

If not reprehensible enough by itself, it narrowed the field of winnable votes to just 14 on the first round, as well as left open the enticement for those delegates to trade votes between the two tournaments awarded simultaneously. You can also add in the lure of agreements to back one another, once their own country is eliminated.

But the FA cannot complain about men who ignore the technical excellence of bids casting votes, when their delegate falls squarely into that category.

That’s not even the best part if this morning’s suggestions of the source of England’s votes are confirmed.

According to the BBC, the England 2018 team believe African confederation president Issa Hayatou provided the only vote they won from a non-Englishman.

Hayatou was one of the officials directly accused of corruption in the BBC Panorama program “FIFA’s Dirty Secrets”. That doesn’t seem to have stopped him voting for England. Nor should it have. They had a very good bid with excellent infrastructure.

(see: BBC Accuse Four More FIFA Officials by Name)

If true far from dissuading delegates from voting for them, the FA took 100% of their external votes from officials the BBC directly accused of dodgy dealings. Admittedly, that’s playing with statistics. It certainly doesn’t prove that others were not dissuaded, but it does beg one conclusion.

Given that 100% of England’s votes came from their own delegate and a man they believe to be bribable, does it not lend to the conclusion that ‘FIFA corruption’ may have been England’s only remaining friend in the room? Their failure to win a single ‘honestly cast’ vote suggests that there were other factors than the corruptness of the delegates working against them.

England’s failure to secure a single vote from someone they considered persuadable by fair means sends an entirely different message from those emanating from their angrier tabloids, and more regrettably their own footballing establishment.

The final accusation is that several delegates promised them votes and did not deliver.

They are fingering the USA delegate Chuck Blazer as one of them. CONCACAF President Jack Warner is another accused according to the BBC.

This is where England Football Association’s previous behaviour has come back to haunt them and may lead us to a bigger clue as to the real source of their humiliation.

In order to win the Euro 1996 hosting rights, the FA struck a ‘Gentleman’s Agreement’ with the German Football Association (DFB) about the 2006 World Cup.

The FA agreed to support Germany’s bid for World Cup 2006 in return for German support in 1996. We can breeze pass the fact that this is exactly the type of horse trading the anglophone blogosphere is now so vituperatively against.

It is what happened next that has come back to haunt the FA.

Far from keeping their word to support the German bid, they actually decided to compete with the Germans and launch their own bid. They even rubbed salt in the wounds of their betrayed former allies, by pointing to the success of Euro 96 as their launching pad. They also sought to deny what everybody knew to be true, that there ever was this agreement.

See:  FA Chair Graham Kelly Continue to deny it in October 1999)

Only one other European nation, Scotland, voted for their 2006 bid; the rest unanimously backing the Germans. Their reputation inside UEFA has never recovered and the constant reminders of who invented the game makes things worse not better.

The aforementioned Geoff Thompson, now chair of the England 2018 Bid and one of the two men who voted for it, has since admitted the truth:

“The brutal facts are that there were two unwanted bookends to the England 2006 bid. At one end was the gentleman’s agreement by which we agreed to step aside for the Germans after we’d been handed Euro 96. At the other is the sight of thugs masquerading as England fans at Euro 2000. People don’t want to reward a country that has fans like that. I’m afraid we couldn’t get over those problems. The fact that we attempted to overturn the gentleman’s agreement caused great consternation in Europe. Everybody in UEFA was fundamentally against us.”

(See: Northern Echo: 2006 World Cup bid was already doomed)

Now it falls to Mr Thompson to tell the truth once more no matter how unpalatable it may be to English ears.

Accusing Chuck Blazer and Jack Warner of reneging on their agreements to support your bid is hypocrisy of the highest degree just four years after doing the same to Germany, a breach of promise a decade in the planning.

Without defending the practice, the FA got what they deserved from the two CONCACAF voters. They also reaped their just reward from the complete absence of a single European vote four years later without the compliant Scots to afford them some respectability.

This morning, England bid leader Anson advised England against applying again.

“I would say right now don’t bother (bidding) unless you know the process is going to change,” he said.

No-one would disagree with that. We advocate that the 203 FIFA delegates, minus those representing bidding nations, are reduced to 25 voters by random ballot the night before the vote. The chances of getting caught doing dodgy deals is increased and the chance of benefiting drastically decreased.

But before England applies again though, something else needs to happen. There must be an apology to the Germans, an admission of previous bad conduct and a dismissal of any remaining officials complicit in the decision to launch a 2006 bid.

And perhaps quieten the accusations of bad faith against Blazer and Warner. After all, they are only copying the mother country.