From where I sit, the USA would be a perfect spot for 2022. Plenty of existing stadiums - some of which already house professional football teams (both soccer and gridiron football), so there’s no need to invest billions in new stadiums. First-world infrastructure, a loyal football fan base, growing interest in the sport - there is literally no downside.
OK, so there is one huge downside - that doing so would give the appearance of the US authorities using law enforcement to force FIFA to give the Cup to the US.
Australia may be a decent secondary choice if the WC was to move from Qatar. Australia is now in AFC, so it’d be keeping it in the same confederation. Though moving from a Middle East country to an Anglo country would likely be a tough sell. You almost wish Turkey wasn’t in UEFA for this…
It depends on what you believe is the primary problem with FIFA. Bribery seems to be the deciding factor for many of FIFA’s decision. As an organization, FIFA could make it clear that bribery will not be allowed, and that any FIFA official, or representative of an FIFA official, who solicits, or accepts bribes, will be heavily fined, and will be never again be allowed to associate with FIFA in any capacity.
This is only a suggestion - but in order to simplify the process for FIFA becoming a more open, transparent, and honest organization, let the current selected venues continue to hold their games. Fair, or not, consider it a done deal and move on. All new selections should be made in a new bribery-free, and open-to-all, environment. IMHO, of course.
I never suggested that nothing was done. But while a million dollar training centre might be nice, I’d be severely pissed off if I know that an additional four million went into the pocket of the corrupt FA official in exchange for presidential support.
How much better if the governance was rock solid. Then FIFA could even get away with paying out half as much to twice as many schemes but having it all go to where it is needed.
But lets drop the fantasy that only under Blatter would football flourish in the developing nations, that is just bullshit.
Fine, so tie the amount they get to the transparency of their accounting processes. You aren’t clean, you get nothing. This isn’t Medicine Sans Frontiers emergency aid. We don’t need to feel bad about refusing to feed corruption.
But not from anyone who holds any sort of executive power, therefore their whining can be safely ignored.
No one has ever said that. What people have said is that Blatter had a verifiable track record of helping world football flourish in developing nations and THAT is why he had CAF and AFC votes locked up. He walked the walk, so to speak, and none of his opponents even spoke to it (Prince Ali seems to be speaking about it now, but as Men in Blazers pointed out, he’s a decided uncharismatic candidate… he may not survive in a multi candidate race).
And here you go, head of the English FA, Greg Dyke said the 2022 WC would go to the US in a revote:
Also bolstering expectations is that a lot of people feel that since the US was the runner up to Qatar, they should be the heirs apparent as Dyke also alludes to.
I’m not quite there. Yes it’s all corrupt, but the thread seems to be conflating World Cup selection corruption with Blatter election corruption. The latter is, if true, a result of the largesse (bribes or not) bestowed on developing countries.
But the World Cup is selected by the Executive Committee, which had 22 eligible voters at the time of selection, 8 of whom were from UEFA, 1 from the US*. Qatar managed to draw 11 of those 22 votes in the first round of voting, including France and Spain (with Blatter voting for the US). So whatever happened in that selection, UEFA is a little hypocritical (especially Platini) if they’re saying something funny happened, but it was those non-European countries and not them.
Oh, I suppose maybe they weren’t bribed, but were afraid to vote against all the money they’ve openly received from Qatar (check out FC Barcelona’s kit sometime)…but still. UEFA feels sanctimonious here.
Im certainly not blind to corruption at Uefa, and I dont believe most other informed opinion is either. If Platini were to retire from football administration tomorrow the game would not miss him.
edit: great link, thanks. The whole game stinks with people like Blazer, even if they are not all corrupt. Too many travelling around fatcatting(if that is a word).
An organisation willing to allow the widespread corruption for the election need not stretch itself too far to allow corruption of the World Cup process. If you were going to design an organisation to reward and propagate corruption, you’d come up with FIFA in its current form.
I think the conflation is natural and accurate. I don’t know of anyone who thinks all the european representatives are clean, Platini certainly isn’t. I see him as a baby Blatter with more luxuriant hair.
You do realize that none of our football association execs has said a word about taking the World Cup away from Qatar, right? Most football associate execs haven’t. It’s been talking heads at best. As the original quote said, most of the folks who have talked about taking the WC from Qatar say in the next breath were they want it instead.
So it appears to me that you are constantly shifting goalposts here.
I have absolutely no idea what you are claiming here. The bit in bold above is exactly my own point. That no-one in any sort of power has suggested taking it from Qatar and giving it to someone else. So I’m at at loss to know who (with *any *sort of authority) is giving you cause for concern by their words.
I’ve linked it to you earlier. It doesn’t matter if they have no authority, the gleeful speculation by talking heads, podcast hosts (who I guess are talking heads as well), and general folks about how they can take the 2022 WC makes me highly uncomfortable. It’s like a bunch of vultures waiting for the kill to happen. The general zeitgeist has been folks watching and waiting for when they can snatch it away - which has unpinned a lot of (granted, not all) anti-Qatar WC talk. And it makes other folks in this thread (who likely have been following the Qatar scandals for years) uncomfortable as well (Maserschmidt for one).
Ah, OK. I think we were just misunderstanding each other. I thought you were saying that the authorities were making those noises. All clear now.
I don’t have any sympathy for Qatar though. Even if a fair proportion of the baying mob are dicks it doesn’t make Qatar hosting the world cup any less ridiculous.
Oh God no… the authorities are likely going to end up keeping Qatar I imagine. I think they realize it may end up being a train wreck trying to take it away due to the vote being combined for 2018 and 2022, and well, the general not-really-rising-to-corruption-but-close thing of Qatar and other Mideast states send a lot of money to Western Europe (Barcelona is sponsored by Qatar Airlines, Real Madrid by Emirates Airlines, as is Arsenal in England, and PSG in France, etc). There would be too many bright lights in places that European folks don’t want them to be - and there seems to be a feeling among journalists in Africa that having it Qatar is a victory for “little guy” (as silly as that sounds) but they aren’t soccer royalty so some solidarity there.
I don’t think it’s going to be a disaster or anything, but I do think that you really don’t give the tournament to a country that has that poor of a human rights record, even if there weren’t any bribes for the location. Moving it to winter I don’t particularly care about.
It’ll be interesting to see how the investigation plays out. It is still too early but now that attention is being focussed on the 2018 and 2022 bids we must at least consider the possibility of evidence coming to light that may force FIFA’s hand on this. Not least the fact that other bidding countries would have a legal claim that their bids were unfairly treated.
It is a train-wreck of uncertain severity so far.
I do feel very sorry for Australia. Their bid was criticised for the need to change the timing of the tournament and yet Qatar are given free reign to do exactly that (And to a more disruptive extent)
I sometimes wonder if the braying crowd has been paid off by Qatar. Look
Lots of claims about bribery of the executive committee and the selection teams. If the WC was actually “bought” its actually very unlikely that it was bribes to these people that did it. Not a squeak about the inordinate amounts of monies transferred to the leading clubs of European football and whatever quid pro quo was agree or pressure brought on to Euros to convince their members to vote Qatar, which actually would have happened if the WC was illegally bought.
Lots of talk about Human rights, but a weirdly specific focus. Deaths in the construction industry. Construction is a business where deaths of workers occur depressingly regularly. And they have just bandied about numbers of estimated deaths, without any context as to whether those occurred during construction directly related to the Cup. Not much talk about Qatari trampling on Civil liberties, like oh, their hosting of CIA torture centres..
So the focus seems to be weirdly on issues that the Qataris are most likely innocent of and can fairly easily prove their innocence and not on where their story is likely more shaky.
Did you just skip over what I posted above? The Executive Committee selects the World Cup site, not the members. And Check Blazer has already rolled on some fellow Executive Committee members, admitting that the 1998 and 2010 World Cup selection process involved bribery of the Executive Committee, some of which he actually helped facilitate. So yes, pure bribery of the Executive Committee for site selection does happen.
