The Death of Football?

I can't believe Thomas Hitzlsperger is gay. Only joking, that's not what this blog is about. Hitzlsperger coming out as gay is actually a very positive thing for football, so fair play to him for that. This is actually about the other big news from the world of football that broke last week; the announcement from FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar will be held in the winter and not, as is tradition, in the summer. And this is actually one of the rare occasions where I write something quite serious, so I don't even know why I started it with a joke.

Vagina Stadium Qatar, host of the 2022 World Cup final

But anyway, the death of football. It has been clear for quite some time that the people running football do not care about the fans who follow the sport any more. Which is a shame, because without the fans football is nothing. But this latest decision, to move the 2022 World Cup to winter, is, I believe, the final nail in the coffin for the game as we know it. Let me explain my reasoning for this...

First of all, and most importantly, the whole bidding process for host nations of the FIFA World Cup has now been thrown into disrepute. Most people in this country will know how the bidding process works, as like myself you've probably seen England go through it twice in your life time. The countries involved spend a lot of money putting together a presentation for FIFA that shows why they deserve to host the World Cup. The thing is, when the country puts together the bid, they are trying to show that they are a suitable host for a tournament taking place in the summer. There's no other option, FIFA do not let them choose between summer and winter, they are under instruction that the World Cup has to take place in summer.

This means that Qatar's bid for the 2022 World Cup was based on a summer world cup. If they would have been bidding for a winter tournament, this wouldn't be such a big deal. But they weren't, so it is. In fact, I know this has gained a lot of media attention, but I don't even think it's being treated as seriously as it should be. This is where I get to the real point. Because if Qatar entered a bid for a summer World Cup, and FIFA compared that bid to the other entries, and decided that it was the best one, then surely they shouldn't have to switch the tournament to the winter? But they did. After choosing Qatar for the 2022 World Cup, they then came to the conclusion that it was not safe enough to host the tournament there in the summer. Why wasn't this picked up on during the bidding process? It can only mean that the bid wasn't considered properly in the first place, and Qatar were awarded the World Cup for different reasons...

Now I learned about liable and slander when studying journalism in uni (even though I can't remember which is which) but to be honest this is just a blog that's headed by a photo of Adam Sandler in the bath, so I'm not really bothered if what I say breaks any laws. And what I'm saying is that FIFA officials accepted money from Qatar in exchange for awarding them the 2022 World Cup. It doesn't really take a genius to work that out, they're not a suitable host nation, therefore their bid to host the World Cup was false, but they are an extremely rich country, and they were awarded the World Cup regardless of the aforementioned issues.

This may all seem obvious, but this could really spell the death of football as far as I'm concerned. I just wonder how far it could go. FIFA, and a few men at the top of the organisation, pretty much control the game of football around the globe. These few men at the top of the organisation are the ones who decide who hosts the world cup, and are the ones who have accepted payment to award it to Qatar. UEFA run football in Europe, and the European teams really make the world cup what it is. If UEFA wanted to, they could withdraw the European countries from the world cup in protest, and FIFA would have to act on this or they wouldn't have a tournament. However, UEFA have shown no concern for what has happened. Even England on it's own has a fair bit of influence on UEFA and indeed FIFA, but they have not acted at all. Initially, the FA seemed to show some defiance, but all of a sudden this changed and they seemed to accept any decision made by FIFA. And this begs the question, how far have the payments gone from Qatar to secure this World Cup for them?

"Pay me and it's yours."

This is where the end really is in sight for the real supporters in football. We've seen that the top governing body in football can award a country the World Cup just to line their own pockets. How long will it be before a country like Qatar decides it wants to host the Champions League final, and pays UEFA officials vast amounts of money for this? And can we trust them to turn it down? I don't trust anyone who is running the game any more, they're all greedy and don't care about the fans. This has been obvious for years, with poor choices of host stadiums and tiny allocations for supporters, so it wouldn't take much for them to take the next step and move the final outside of Europe.

And could it possibly go further? What if a rich country far away decided it wanted to host the FA Cup final? I wouldn't trust our FA to deny them. They're currently paying off a huge debt on Wembley stadium, and could pay that off a lot quicker with a massive pay off from abroad than they ever could just from hosting matches.

Anyway, I'm not to sure if I've been able to put into words exactly what I was thinking, but hopefully it gives people something to think about. And in all honesty I wouldn't be surprised if we see a country outside of Europe awarded the Champions League final or FA Cup final within the next few years.

@adamheath