The recent revelations made by former FA chairman Lord Triesman’s claims to Parliament’s football governance inquiry that FIFA’s Jack Warner, Nicolas Leoz, Worawi Makudi and Ricardo Teixeira asked for a variety of bribes in return for their England 2018 World Cup vote were hardly surprising. We all know FIFA is corrupt, especially the bid process, but the truly shocking revelation about the Qatari bid from a whistle blower inside the Qatari bid team are now threatening to bring about some long awaited justice and strip the tiny Gulf nation of the tournament.
Now I’ve been a pretty big critic of the Qatari bid from the start, and frankly it was absurd to even allow a bit from a country of 1.6 million people, no football culture, and 50C temperatures in the summer. But that said, if they had won the bid fair and square they deserved to hold it, but we all know they didn’t. Politics in the Gulf is marked by bribery, corruption, and nepotism and the Qataris brought that perspective with them, along with a lack of any sense of irony or cynicism to FIFA. It won’t surprise many that a government based on bribery, corruption, and nepotism found fertile ground in which to plant itself in Zurich, but what was surprising was how they seemed to think no one would notice what was going on.
Well now there is evidence behind it, and a re-vote seems possible, but unlikely. I hope they strip Qatar of the World Cup, and give it the second place bid, the United States. A re-vote would inevitably be marred by further allegations of corruption, and another bid process would be too costly. Qatar has lost all credibility, and no matter how much money they spend, they can’t hide now.
Let’s hope justice will be served.
Written by: Matthew Wall, editor, soccerprose.com
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