England World Cup bid

[cream]

According to the Sunday Supplement (Sky) people involved in England's bid knew 13 of the 22 votes were buyable

I wouldn't take anything they say seriously.

[CJ]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/dec/05/fifa

2018 - The timeline

How Sepp's big decision was made easier:
1) Leaked US cable describes Russia as "a rampantly corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy" run by a leader who has "amassed a massive secret fortune" by running a "mafia state" based on "personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money, a parallel tax system and bribery estimated at $300bn a year".
2) Sepp: "Congratulations to Russia! Clearly, I am a satisfied man."
The highlights

Highlights from the last three months as Sepp set about shaping his legacy ("I'm working to make football a school of life, bringing hope, bringing emotions!"):

• Best individual performance: Executive Committee member Amos Adamu – caught in the bribery sting four months after telling colleagues facing separate fraud charges how they should behave. "The public sees every football administrator as corrupt, and I cannot explain why it is so. We must always be transparent to prove them wrong!"

• Runner-up: Former ExCo member Ismael Bhamjee – caught in the same sting, four years after his first one: exposed in 2006 for touting World Cup tickets at three times face value to supplement his £270 daily Fifa expenses. "I got myself in a mess," Bhamjee said at the time. "This was out of character."

• Best award: Former ExCo member Viacheslav Koloskov – travelling to Asunción in October to lobby current ExCo member Nicolás Léoz for Russia's bid. Léoz (accused by Panorama of taking £450k in bribes) honoured Koloskov (who received an unauthorised £65k payment from Sepp in 2002) with an award for "services to football and its principles".

• Best analysis: also from Koloskov – greeting the publication of the bids' expensive technical reports in November: "I know from my own experience that ExCo members work with little information. The inspection reports are enormous, so no one reads them."

• Best timing: October – Russia's sports minister Vitaly Mutko attacks the British press for "obsessive" analysis of Russia's racism record. Also that month: Russian football agent Vladimir Abramov gives an interview to Sport.ru about how Nigerians ruin Russian cities with "their drugs, and ultimately, their Aids". Abramov: "Teams shouldn't have more than one dark-skinned footballer. When there's more than one they are aggressive"; plus: "I am very respectful towards blacks, but Russia isn't ready for them." FIfa's view: "Racism will not be taken into account in the bidding process … It is not an operation matter".

• Best outrage: Mutko again, on why attention from the English press left him exasperated. "No matter what we say we are portrayed by them as a hotbed of corruption. It is not true." Later that week: Russian authorities launch a criminal investigation into alleged fraud at Mutko's ministry, including Mutko's own expenses claim for 97 breakfasts eaten during a 20-day trip to Vancouver.

• Best defenders: Fifa ExCo members on the "slanders" against Sepp's process:

1) Jérôme Valcke (sacked in 2006 for "lying repeatedly" to potential sponsors and reappointed by Sepp in 2007): "We have done everything we can to make sure this process is fair and transparent."
2) Chuck Blazer (called a liar "without credibility" by a US judge in 2006): "You can't say the system is bad just because one newspaper created a scam, a trap."
3) Jack Warner (totally clean): "We preach equity… we live by our principle of fair play!"
4) Plus: Angel María Villar Llona – making an epic address to colleagues in Zurich: "I love Fifa dearly but those I love the most are my colleagues in the ExCo. Recently we have been criticised by certain media, but unfortunately for them, Fifa is a clean institution. We have heard enough slander. This process is clean – whatever they say!"

• Proudest media campaign: The Sun, writing an open letter to Sepp on the eve of voting, attacking Panorama's "sabotage" of England's bid. "Today The Sun makes this plea to Mr Blatter and Fifa: don't be put off by the BBC's rehashing of ancient history. Despite BBC muckraking, The Sun trusts Fifa to put football first." (3 Dec, The Sun: "FIXED! FIFA BUNGS RUSSIA THE WORLD CUP … Calls for corruption probe …")

• Plus: the best single assessment of why England lost – seven weeks before the vote: former ExCo member Ahongalu Fusimalohi, also caught in the Sunday Times sting, warning that England must offer bribes. "England don't strike deals. It's sad but it's true." Fusimalohi explained: "It is corrupt – but only if you get caught."
Clean break: moving on

Next for Sepp after a tough few months: a chance for some clean PR in the build-up to Brazil 2014. Overseeing the tournament: Fifa ExCo member Ricardo Teixeria – due in court this week in Rio over alleged money laundering, tax evasion and "other economic crimes". Teixeria, who denies wrongdoing, was due in court last week, but secured a postponement so he could vote in Zurich.
And finally: why England really lost

The Daily Mail on why England's bid failed: "Was it the video that cost us?" The Mail says the film shown during England's bid presentation in Zurich was "un-English", too "multi-cultural" and relied on "a range of ethnically diverse figures".
(Online comments on the story from Mail readers: • "It makes me sick when we have this 'multicultural' rubbish rubbed in our faces" • "This country is dying" • "You couldn't make it up, we Brits have to put up with this nonsense every day" • "Fools! Multi cultural idiots!!!" • "Well done Daily Mail for having the courage to speak up" • plus: "If only Diana were here to see what this nation has become.")

[Kenneth]

/ @ The S*n.

[CJ]

yeah and the daily mail.

[Vermilion]

/ @ The S*n.

And people are still taken in by the rag.

[Kenneth]

yeah and the daily mail.

[Leyton388]

all you can do is laugh and the S*N and Daily fail. **** me

[Exiled_red]

all you can do is laugh and the S*N and Daily fail. **** me

[CJ]

i heard that 6 people on the committee have told us they voted for us.

Also that more people have told Australia they voted for them than voted for them.

[Craig_H]

http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Antarctica-2026-World-Cup-Bid/121922804539244

[Leyton388]

i heard that 6 people on the committee have told us they voted for us.

Also that more people have told Australia they voted for them than voted for them.

Let me get this right. So is this the story that the EXCO members told england they would vote for us or you were told that they DID vote for us?

[Bender]

Fifa insists it is not planning changes to the voting process to decide the hosts of a World Cup.
BBC

[Kenneth]

Yeah, no ****. Far too profitable for the old boys club.

[Assassin]

Fifa insists it is not planning changes to the voting process to decide the hosts of a World Cup.
BBC

Yeah, no ****. Far too profitable for the old boys club.

Ed Zachery, these ****ers have pocketed millions from the likes of Abromovich and Sheiks for their votes last week

ps. Whats the frequency....

[Fredo]

Those who tarred all of the English press with the same brush, read.

Link

In this World Cup sewer, we reptiles of British journalism hold our heads high

Let Fifa's murk be cleared. As WikiLeaks has shown, disclosure is all we have when audit is polluted and politicians are cowed


The grovelling of the prime minister and the second in line to the throne before Fifa's Zurich racket has been a national humiliation. Had they no intelligence of what was going on? Had this exposure to ridicule not been risk-assessed? Even a cursory glance at the allegations from the Sunday Times and the BBC's Panorama would have warned Downing Street and the Palace that these were not fit people for Britain's leaders to be seen glad-handing. The business recalls the obeisance to certain Italian gentlemen once required of American presidential candidates.

The one leader to emerge from the World Cup farrago with credit is, of all people, Russia's Vladimir Putin, who wisely decided that the Zurich shenanigans were beneath his dignity. Depths to which the Russian prime minister is not prepared to stoop are deep indeed. But then he probably already knew he had won. Why did Britain not know? Why does David Cameron now react with a solemnity more appropriate for a terrorist outrage or a natural disaster?

The abasement of Cameron and Prince William is equalled only by the shocking behaviour of England's World Cup team, in rubbishing journalists investigating Fifa corruption as "unpatriotic" and "embarrassing". Who are these people, and what values do they represent? With six Fifa officials already sacked and clouds hovering over at least three of those voting in the bid race, Britain should have had no dealings with Fifa over the World Cup until it cleansed its stables. If that "damaged" a bid, more credit to Britain. Surely honesty comes before sport.

The problem, of course, is that sport turns the heads of grown men and warps their moral compass. Tony Blair, Lord Coe and Tessa Jowell behaved like besotted groupies before the self-serving tycoons of the 2005 International Olympic Committee, who proceeded to dun the British taxpayer of £9bn to stage their two-week festival of self-glorification. Football's World Cup at least makes money for its host nation. But what other British industry (besides weapons) can demand the time and humiliation of politicians and royalty to this degree, and in so obviously contaminated a process?

These international bodies know no accountability. Their sole enemy is disclosure. Governments, diplomats, officials, contractors – all have a vested interest in secrecy, as millions of pounds passes from national taxpayers in opaque "payments to international organisations", and then out to the NGOs and consultants who form an outer ring of cheerleaders. Their staffs owe loyalty only to their bank balances and jobs for life. Their income, as we saw in the secret settlement of Switzerland's Fifa-linked ISL fraud trial, receives little scrutiny. These are not servants of sport, just very rich men cleverly playing on national pride.

I have no illusions about the press. I have watched enough dirt swilling down the journalistic sewer to abandon any quest therein for responsibility, accuracy, sensitivity or humility. The great American editor Oz Elliott once lectured graduates at the Columbia School of Journalism on their sacred duty to democracy as the unofficial legislators of mankind. He asked me what I thought of it. I said it was no good to me: I was trained as a reptile lurking in the gutter whose sole job was to "get the bloody story".

Yet journalism's stock-in-trade is disclosure. As we have seen this week with WikiLeaks, power loathes truth revealed. Disclosure is messy and tests moral and legal boundaries. It is often irresponsible and usually embarrassing. But it is all that is left when regulation does nothing, politicians are cowed, lawyers fall silent and audit is polluted. Accountability can only default to disclosure. As Jefferson remarked, the press is the last best hope when democratic oversight fails, as it does in the case of most international bodies.

I found myself chastised this week for my defence of WikiLeaks, on the ground that thieves should not revel in their crime by demanding that victims be more careful with their property. But in matters of public policy who is thieving what from whom? The WikiLeaks material was left by a public body, the US state department, like a wallet open on a park bench, except that in this case the wallet was full of home truths about the mendacity of public policy.

Of course diplomacy between nations – over sport or whatever – cannot be conducted entirely in the open. Some secrets must be protected. But American secrets shared with 2 million people authorised to see them are hardly secrets. The content of the WikiLeaks cables cannot have surprised anyone in the know, least of all the foreign intelligence agencies that must long have been reading them.

What is intriguing is the hysteria of power at seeing its inner beliefs and processes revealed. The denunciation of WikiLeaks as an "attack on America" from the political right is similar to the attitude of England's football authorities towards the Sunday Times and the BBC. Someone had broken wind in church. Truth briefly swept aside the deceptions of public form and left reality exposed. The players in a once subtle game that had fallen to lying and cat-calling were suddenly told to stop, pull themselves together and look each other in the eye. As the great Donald Rumsfeld said, stuff happens. The air is cleared.

The same goes for Fifa, whose processes cannot even plead national security. Its murk may now be investigated as disappointed nations seek redress. England's sports administrators will doubtless accuse the Sunday Times and the BBC of wrecking their bid – though its goose was clearly cooked long ago. These are officials who tried to sweep under the carpet the bungs and kick-backs by which their sport was fuelled, and who turn a blind eye to the sources of football's Russian and Arab wealth.

They may now take consolation in finding out how they were beaten. That will come only from a free and active journalism. In the case of WikiLeaks it was journalism that censored vulnerable names and sources from what the state department was widely disseminating. It was journalism that mediated and interpreted the raw data. It was journalism, and journalism alone, that investigated alleged corruption at Fifa.

Journalism has revealed the antics of drugs companies, the mistakes of climate change scientists, the depths of police misbehaviour, the tax-dodging and theft by British MPs and the City's bonus culture. Nobody else did. When the public interest is undermined by the lies and paranoia of power, it is disclosure that takes sanity by the scruff of its neck and sets it back on its feet.

So thank goodness for disclosure. Thank goodness for journalism. I am sorry we did not get the World Cup but, had we done so, it would have been mired in claims of dishonesty. In losing, we had the honour of seeing British journalism doing something to clean up a disreputable sport. That is the cup I would prefer to win.

• This article was amended on 3 December 2010. The original referred to Britain's World Cup Team, Britain's football authorities and Britain's sports administrators. These have all been corrected.