Football has been a wonderful distraction for the past month, both for fans and for the game’s governing body FIFA. We lolling, couch-tethered spectators have happily evaded the daily realities of existence, and the depressing headlines of the actual—as opposed to the sporting—news. FIFA, meanwhile, will have been overjoyed that the generally great football has meant a much lower focus during the tournament on its reputation as an ethically bankrupt institution still allegedly rife with corruption, hypocrisy and cronyism, and its disastrous decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. The word “disastrous” is of course overused in sport, usually to describe a mistake by Steven Gerrard that cost his club side the title, or his country a point against Uruguay. In the context of Qatar, however, the word is genuinely apposite for those poorly paid migrant workers who have died or been exploited while upgrading the country’s infrastructure and building its new stadiums. FIFA’s cuddly, all-inclusive clichés touting Fair Play and fighting discrimination won’t apply to Qatar either—homosexuality is illegal there, and political parties are banned.
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Calls to re-open the bidding process for the 2022 tournament have been fuelled by exposés in The Guardian about Qatar’s disgraceful conditions for migrant workers, and in The Sunday Times with regard to alleged attempts by Qatari former football administrator Mohammed bin Hammam to influence FIFA’s 24-member Executive Committee (ExCom). Should FIFA finally see sense and allow this to happen, then one of the main candidates would be the United States, which during the original bidding process was among the front-runners to host in 2022. FIFA President Sepp Blatter has so far publicly refused to consider the option of cancelling 2022 in Qatar, though FIFA will rule on the validity of the bidding process in September or October. Instead, Blatter managed to outrage major European domestic leagues by admitting a winter tournament might be necessary due to the impossibly high summer temperatures in the Gulf state. Yet there is a precedent for changing host nations. When the World Cup was still a 16-team tournament in the 1970s, Colombia was chosen to host in 1986, because it was South America’s turn after Spain 82. However, new FIFA President João Havelange had ousted Stanley Rous from power in 1974 by promising African and Asian countries more representation at the World Cup. In return for their votes, the Spain 1982 tournament was expanded to 24 teams in order to include two nations each from Africa, Asia/Oceania, and North/Central America. In the early 1980s, Colombia was struggling economically and was already behind on its stadium building programme. It was also mired in an ongoing civil war that reached back to the brutal decade of La Violencia during the 1940s and 50s, and which was now manifested in myriad conflicts between the state, drug cartels, left wing guerrillas, and US-backed right wing death squads. No doubt to Zürich’s relief, it withdrew from hosting less than four years before the 1986 tournament, professing that it was unable to accommodate the eight extra teams. Which country in the hemisphere of the Americas was best equipped to step in at such short notice? When the bidding was re-opened, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and the USA submitted proposals, with the latter two emerging as favourites. The US bidding committee had the strong backing of the North American Soccer League (NASL), which was struggling to survive by 1983. Clubs were going under and owners were jumping ship, and so the league and its flagship team, the New York Cosmos, saw the 1986 tournament as a potential saviour. Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Dr. Henry Kissinger joined the campaign, but it was undermined from within. The US Soccer Federation (the US equivalent to the FA) had always been at odds with the brash and innovative NASL leadership, and only gave the bid its lukewarm backing. One contemporary account alleged that a “prominent USSF member” phoned Havelange at a critical point in the negotiations to tell him that the US was “not ready” to stage such a tournament. So FIFA awarded the 1986 tournament to Mexico, which had hosted the World Cup as recently as 1970, although that was in its favour as well—it had already proved it was capable. “Mexico is a real soccer country,” Havelange said, adding that it was too early for countries like the US and Canada to stage the World Cup, and citing long travel distances between host cities as another obstacle. That Havelange was close friends with Mexican TV magnate Emilio Azcarraga had absolutely nothing to do with FIFA’s decision. USSF President Gene Edwards—who had candidly pronounced after the tournament was awarded to Mexico, “We [the US] would really have messed it up”—was indignant at the very idea of a Havelange-Azcarraga stitch-up. “I don’t believe the president of an organisation would subject himself to something like that,” he said. As if. Just one year later, the football tournament at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics attracted phenomenal crowds across the US—in the high-five figures for the USA, Brazil and most of the knockout round matches, and almost 102,000 for the France-Brazil gold medal game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. FIFA’s dollar-starred eyes were suddenly opened after all to the commercial potential of a USA-hosted World Cup, and it was duly given the 1994 edition. This came too late to save the NASL (which had gone under a decade earlier), but the superbly organised tournament set new records for attendance and revenue, and laid the way for its successor, Major League Soccer. Just as it had promised in its bid for 1986, the United States was able to lay down grass in its modern and capacious American football stadia, while boasting a network of airports that made the movement of teams and fans a cinch. What is the relevance of the 1994 tournament to Qatar in 2022? The inherent strength of the US bid is that American football teams constantly renew and rebuild their stadiums to the highest standard, and that these continue to be used after the tournament by their primary tenants. Contrast that with Brazil, where FIFA, as it did in South Africa and host nations before that, imposed its will on a single country and demanded that it finance the renovation or construction of twelve high-capacity, perfectly fitted stadiums for a mere handful of games. It is estimated that the 2014 tournament will have cost the Brazilian government around £7.9 billion. The stadium in Manaus where England played Italy will, after just four games, join the White Elephants’ Society that is the legacy of several venues in South Korea (2002), Portugal (2004 European Championship) and South Africa (2010). These countries now all boast a number of huge but barely patronised facilities that run at a loss due to high maintenance costs, and which drained the public purse of money that everyone knows should have been better spent elsewhere. This is not to say the USA should be automatically awarded the 2022 World Cup in the event of Qatar’s disqualification. It would, however, make sense to host the now bloated, 32-team tournament in countries that can provide the necessary stadiums and infrastructure without running up a massive public debt. Yet as long as FIFA eschews transparency and continues to court dictatorially inclined governments (Russia) and states where political parties are banned (Qatar), it’s unlikely that the body will have the courage or the conviction to backtrack on its hopelessly flawed decision, reached thanks to a dubious and secretive bidding process. Nonetheless, once the new world champion has been crowned on Sunday, our attention needs to return immediately to the weakness of FIFA’s governance. The conduct of its ExCom members in the run-up to the award of the Russia and Qatar tournaments needs to be thoroughly investigated by an independent body (a FIFA-instigated report due out after the World Cup is not expected to crap in its own nest). Meanwhile, a set of minimum standards on both infrastructure and constitutional civil rights should be demanded of countries who want to submit future hosting bids. There will never be a perfect host any more than there will ever be a perfect world, but an ideally reformed FIFA needs to become as democratic and accountable as the countries that it will allow to host its flagship event. Rock n Roll Soccer: The Short Life and Fast Times of the North American Soccer League is published by Icon Books on September 4th
