The dual bidding for the 2018 and the 2022 FIFA World Cups degenerated into that proverbial needle, which broke an old and unintentionally salivating camel’s back.
Wait 10+ years, get a younger camel, repeat. Learn nothing.
Lunacy, they say, is if you make the same mistake several times, expecting a different result.
Hence the new camel did just that and was surprised that the outcome looks dire. Call that what you will.
But when you get a brand new post-2015 raft of laws – a bit like Moses, isn’t it? – that proclaim transparency, clarity, morality and ethics – and then proceed to doing something even more badly than in 2010, you simply must be pathologically delusional if you expect a different outcome. Hence Chile’s outrage to have been dissed, and both Uruguay and Morocco demanding the final match cannot be a surprise. Not really.
FIFA’s overlord, GI Joe, and his recently anointed GS sidekick (as unapproved and unelected by the Council as his hapless female predecessor – there go those damned laws again) determined that not only was it best to announce and determine two World Cups at once, yet again (Jerôme is cry-laughing), but that it was a waste of time to have the Congress vote about it. Rubberstamping is what the FIFA Congress does best, and rubberstamping is what the Congress will do again.
Therefore, the die was cast without much ado, and 2030 was handed to not two but six countries in several time-zones and thousands of miles apart “because legacy” or some such crap. And because “uniting the world” (megalomania and a deranged understanding of one’s own relevance is apparently innate at the top of FIFA). Heard that before when Blatter thought that football was more powerful than any religion.
Forgotten was the fact that Chile was left out in the cold (although they had joined the quadruple bid for Latin America with the three who now get a game or two), and Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina will be kicking the ball first, before it sails across the Atlantic to far-away Portuguese shores, only to also land in Spain, and – surprise, surprise – Morocco, the all-time loser of World Cup bids.
With Ukraine originally part of the European bid – Spain and Portugal were initiators – things turned a tad sour when the Saudis hired Greece and temporarily messed up the European dream. Then Ukraine dropped out (Zelensky didn’t see how he could get weapons out of that deal, only more private villas, of which he has too many already in Tuscany’s Forte dei Marmi and Florida) and Greece was wobbling, its new-found love for Arabia rapidly freezing by “conscientious politics” (please permit a nervous chuckle).
Meanwhile, one bid group remained steadfast and demanded the birthright: after all, the very first World Cup was staged in Uruguay 100 years ago. The Argentinians, Uruguayans, Paraguayans, and Chileans buried a few hundred hatchets each, and proclaimed a never-ending determination to “go for it” (the football world was getting ready for the millions that were still left for distribution since 2015…).
They felt that football’s global competition simply had to come back home where the first cup was played. That “home” thing ruffled quite a few English feathers because we all know, don’t we, that before every World Cup the English media are 100% certain that this time it would be theirs, the Cup. And it would finally come home. But the damned thing is as evasive as decency and morality in GI Joe’s FIFA – the new camel, remember? – and it has stubbornly stayed away from “home” since 1966, never to return. (Either as hosts or winners).
While everybody was getting ready to sharpen the knives and benefit from a never-before seen flood of “development Dollars” to flow down to the individual Congress Members (211 of them – more costly than 20+ FIFA ExCo septo- and octogenerians), GI Joe made short shrift of it all and decided to gift the FIFA World Cup to – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Wait, what?
Frankly, that’s the real outcome.
Declaring a six-nations World Cup that involves Conmebol, CAF and UEFA – with Concacaf having its own before them – the logic was to declare the remaining two Confederations solely qualified to bid for 2034: AFC and OFC. Latter includes such football superpowers as Fiji, Marshall Islands and Vanuatu – and of course the invincible New Zealanders before I forget.
By declaring this phenomenally smart outcome – Conmebol, CAF and UEFA hosting 2030 together – the Saudis are a shoo-in for 2034. Because who else can? India? Nah. China? Nah – they keep changing their FA teams every minute and throw the old guard into jail. So, nah-nah. Korea South? Well, they seem to have some money left but – nah.
That leaves the Aussies who have recently proven that organizing a football world cup is no big deal (to them – nothing is, is there), even if nobody is watching (because of time-zones). One hears murmurings that they’ll have a go at it again (probably because Sacher-Masoch was not really German but Australian?).
Anybody who underestimates the Saudis is either braindead, an incompetent apprentice or just plain stupid. Joined at their hips, GI Joe, and the Saudi Kingdom (with active support to be delivered by an allegedly Japanese bank – that is mainly financed by, yup, you said it: Saudi and Qatari funds) will pull it off. Gianni so loves them that he wanted to sell FIFA as we know it to them all – for $25 billion. Didn’t work. For now. As long as the Saudis do their own thing and don’t believe a word that comes out of the oracle by name of FIFA, they should be fine (all vile Anglo-Saxon criticism notwithstanding because human rights were actually invented in America, in case anybody forgot. And in Britain – and please do forget history).
But there could be a twist. One more twist that would catapult the Saudis into an unassailable orbit of total success.
This writer hears voices (no worries, he does not usually hear voices), voices that tell a tale of an incredible Saudi future ally-in-the-making who would ascertain by his shear existence that the 2034 FIFA World Cup would become the most unifying cup ever. There you have it!
Let’s see whether those voices become so loud that all and sundry can soon hear them, too. This writer has his ears firmly in the desert sand and will report back. Soon.
Cui bono? Saudi bono. And Gianni’s pockets are rejoicing with green lining.
James Dostoyevsky was a Washington-based author until the end of 2018, where he reported on sports politics and socio-cultural topics. He returned to Europe in 2019 and continues to follow football politics – presently with an emphasis on the Middle East, Europe and Africa.