The England World Cup Bid Disaster 2010

I've been a tad busy recently to do blog posts or screencasts, but I thought I'd squeeze this one in about the England World Cup bid disaster this week, it's fallout and expectations. You could sum it up by using the tag "sore losers" but that wouldn't do it justice. There are several points of note here.

Did the England bid team not know FIFA was corrupt and the bid would come down to who could buy off enough individual members with the best deal? If not, they were incompetent, and therefore should not have had access to £15m of tax payers money to squander.

Did the England bid team know FIFA was corrupt, but yet thought they could play an honest game and win? If so they were naive and therefore shouldn't have had access to £15m of tax payers money to squander.

Did the England bid team know FIFA was corrupt, played the corrupt game themselves and had a campaign of lies to deceive the UK public that it was an honest game? In which case they shouldn't have been trusted with £15m of tax payers money.

If they played the corrupt game, why do they expect crooks to be honest in actually doing what they promised? The fact that someone gave the same people bigger brown envelopes to get the nod is the game they tried to play themselves; and lost. Now the complaints start to flood in about a number of things:

• The UK wasting money because "we didn't know what grounds FIFA were looking for in the bids"
• The system that decides and the people involved are corrupt and unaccountable
• England was the natural choice, Russia and Qatar got it because of the money
• Delegates we thought we'd bought, voted for someone else
• The media shouldn't have annoyed the Gods in FIFA with exposes

While all of these are true, the fact that England CHOSE to participate in a corrupt process speaks volumes. Nobody forced England to put forward a bid. It's not as if England and the UK has been overlooked in terms of hosting major tournaments in the last 20yrs, Euro '96, Commonwealth Games in Manchester I believe, London 2012 etc Yet England still feels it's automatically the only natural choice to host every instance of everything. The belittling of the other bids, not just in this World Cup announcement but in every bidding war seems to fall back to the default "we're the best, Johnny Foreigner is hopeless without us overseeing his work".

Look at how Russia and Qatar have been treated in reports by journalists and commentators "well, we were CLEARLY better but the best bid lost OBVIOUSLY". The arrogance is astounding, it's also ingrained VERY deep that it resurfaces every time England bid for something, which seems to be every chance they get.

I see great potential in Russia, I hoped Russia would get one of the two slots, and I'm glad that they did. Qatar is a very odd choice given the temperatures in the summer. I'd imagine that'd be a lethargic tournament not unlike USA '94 where some games were played in VERY hot conditions.

The more disturbing part is the number of people who were calling for corruption to be ignored, even if temporarily, in order for England to potentially win a race in a corrupt system with corrupt decision makers, and presumably a corrupt bid.

Personally I'm thrilled that England lost both the 2018 and 2022 prizes but not because of any "anyone but England" sentiment. I'm thrilled because it would have cost us a fortune we don't have in the current climate, specially on top of the London 2012 costs. I'd have been much happier if we hadn't wasted £15m of tax payers money on a corrupt race to begin with.

We continue to use the emotional "we are the home of football, it belongs with us"; this would be why England only won ONCE, on home soil, made ONE semi final in Italy, and regularly achieve quarter final positions in major tournaments while others like Brazil, Argentina and Germany regularly reach finals and win. It may have started here, but like so much in life, we stood idle on our arrogance that we're naturally better than everyone else, that they all shot passed us.

The really sad part is that nothing will change because the powers that be are far too entrenched in the status quo, the gravy train trundles on to please their lifestyles. No matter how many times England get sent a message that the world has moved on, the people at the top just don't get it.

For many years I've searched for just the right phrase to sum it up, but a German pundit at the 2006 World Cup nailed it. "England are the self appointed World Champions". Everyone else goes into a competition knowing the others are going to be good, and that they'll have to be good too. They don't go in assuming they are the best and that others will eventually bow to logic and agree.

Yes I am a Scot, would I like to see Scotland bid? No. First we don't have the facilities to bid on our own, but even a joint bid with England, Wales or Northern Ireland would be a bad idea for the very same reasons I object to England bidding on their own. It's a horrendous waste of tax payers money to bribe the decision makers, then put in all the infrastructure requirements which will all benefit private companies, who will no doubt go way overboard in the price, which again screws the UK tax payer. There is no legacy other than more debt, and some media footage of the elite of the day smiling at the opening ceremony, immortalised by attaching their limpets to the sporting events of the day.

Whatever countries do get these events have to spend a fortune ensuring that it's "the biggest yet", nobody wants to put on an event that's a bit more cost centric and longer term sustainable, the whole point is to be glammed up for the few weeks in the worlds spotlight, regardless of the long term damage in costs. Politicians are all about exploiting the "now", they know that by the time the bills come in, they'll have very likely outworn their welcome and have been voted out, at which point they have their little black book of contacts to monetize and the ability to blame the new govt for the financial problems they left behind.