For the second time in a year English football has scored an own-goal in an attempt to influence the Federation of International Football Associations to bend to its will.
The first was with its presumptuous and over-confident, even labelled “arrogant” in some quarters, bid to secure the 2018 World Cup finals. An attempt that was unbelievably crude for a country with such a strong tradition of diplomacy.
For the English authorities who planned that bid, it was not enough to send a delegation associated only with football. They also had to rope in the United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron and probable future Head of State Prince William. Even more unbelievably, the English could not understand how the Russians could possibly have won the right to host the 2018 World Cup when they did not send their political heavyweights such as president Dmitry Medvedev or the even more ‘famous’ Vladimir Putin. England had clearly won that part of the presentation battle 2-0 and so therefore the result had to be a fix.
English football lovers have still not got over this ‘humiliation’ and FIFA will never be forgiven until it awards the World Cup to the home of football.
However, there is a hint that there is more than football pride at stake here. FIFA’s allegedly very dodgy regime is, for a few English newspapers and media outlets, a sensation-guaranteed story. It is easier to write about than the complicated world of politics.
That is why perhaps it is not only FIFA President Sepp Blatter who should be investigated, but certain English newspaper and television news editors who considered the removal of the Swiss to be more important than that of Lybian leader Muammar Gaddafi. As far as is known, Blatter has not been responsible for any deaths, and yet the necessity of his immediate downfall pushed the Libyan tyrant and several others of his ilk off the front pages. In Britain that is.
The rest of the world did not consider the FIFA election to be so important that it necessitated the intervention of its prime minister. When David Cameron added his political weight to call for the suspension of the FIFA presidential election, it did not seem to occur to those caught up in this hysteria, that the government he leads is not even a member of FIFA. The United Kingdom does not and has never belonged to FIFA – only England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland do.
The sad truth is that English football has become so bedazzled by the success of the country’s Premier League, that it has become oblivious to the rest of the world. English writers and fans point to the fact that more people in Africa, Asia and the world in general watch the Premier League than any other. Therefore the whole world wanted to see the World Cup in England – and the removal of the corrupt regime which denied the country this divine right.
Unfortunately, that appears not to be the case as the 186 votes for Blatter from the world’s football associations, with 17 abstentions, shows.
