It is, to use the technical term, early doors in the English Premier League club financial reporting season. Publication this month of Everton’s figures brings to all of three the number of clubs who have so far reported. Yet 2013-14 is already shaping up to be a landmark year for profitability in the English top tier.
Why now, who leaked the information and what could the impact be on FIFA? Those are just three intriguing questions being asked in the wake of the stunning revelations in the New York Daily News that Chuck Blazer, who strode the corridors of power at FIFA for more than a generation, turned FBI informant to spy on several of his colleagues.
When FIFA awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar in favour of England and the United States it was a statement that resonated way beyond the confines of the world¹s football grounds and into the geopolitical sphere.
One day at FIFA HQ, Zurich, I expect to see the familiar world weary face of actor Bill Murray on the path to the entrance, crouched on the steps peering into the flowers. Looking for a Groundhog. There have been more ‘Groundhog Days’ than I’d care to remember around the subject of, you know, begins with a Q. Ends in 2022. Well it will end at some stage of 2022, or even 2023. Who knows when exactly?
The whole business of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, and when it should be held, has again emphasised why sport, more than any other business, must make sure that it arrives at its decisions after very careful deliberation. Now you may say surely that is true of everything we do. Yes. But sport faces a problem no other business, indeed activity, does. This is that by its very nature people who follow sport tend to make instinctive judgements.
In the second to last round of the 2014 CSL season, Beijing Guoan FC went to Guangzhou to play defending champions Evergrande, Before the match, Beijing had 63 points, Guangzhou 69 points. A draw would secure the fourth consecutive title for Guangzhou.
What defines a nation’s football status? Is it the senior-international trophies it has historically won? The depth of its leagues? Its grassroots participation? The quality of its top division, perhaps? Or is it the quality of its national stadium?
The question and answer format is much resorted to in France. To one more versed in the “cut-to-the-chase” school of Anglo-American journalism, however, it can come across as woolly, evasive and self-indulgent.
By relating a conversation word for word as it happened, or purporting to, the convention both implies that every cough and splutter uttered by the protagonists is worthy of the reader’s attention and largely abdicates the editing function.
So, the ECA came up with a brilliant suggestion: the 2022 World Cup should be held in May of that year. Because in May it ain’t that hot yet, they say … A good idea on the face of it.
When UEFA president Michel Platini decided to expand the European Championship finals from 16 to 24 countries, starting in 2016 in his homeland, the purists threw their collective arms up in the air, screamed “Zut alors” – or far worse – and accused the Frenchman of being seriously misguided.
Vuoi vedere che la combinazione tra violenza negli stadi e crisi economica potrebbe provocare novità impreviste?
Who are three biggest names in the Premier League? The three stars, the three headline makers? You’re not thinking of footballers are you? As if they are still important. It’s all about managers now. Wenger this, Mourinho that, Van Gaal the other.
“Connectivity will be an enabler. Transparency for better government, education, and health.” Bill Gates
Eighteen months and 430 pages have gone into Michael Garcia’s report for the FIFA ethics committee into the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bidding, and there have been acres more pages of newsprint produced on the back of it. It was the highest-profile measure to emerge from the Independent Governance Committee’s strategic review of FIFA’s operations.
Well, there will be one on May 29, 2015, and it seems pretty clear who the winner will be.
The bad part is that those who shriek “democracy”, “transparency” and shout for competing candidates, do nothing about it.
Enter football’s new old friend Greg Dyke. It is one thing to decry Blatter’s way of leading world football. And it is similarly easy to jump on the bandwagon but remain an onlooker.
It is impossible to feel any sympathy for Qatar. An oil-rich Gulf state which somehow manages to get the World Cup and then lavishes money to try and convince the world it can not only stage the event but contribute to a better understanding of the world of sport hardly qualifies for sympathy. The immediate response would be there are far worthier subjects to feel sorry for. Yet as Qatar continues to get a bad press we must ask ourselves what is Qatar doing wrong and can they ever get out of this terrible spiral of distrust and dislike?