Fighting a losing battle
Accept
FIFA’s decision may very well be the right one and we should all accept it. It could be that the bid was simply a far more attractive one than England’s.
However, it is only right that as an English football fan I should look at why England failed. After all, I was four years old when we last hosted it and I will now be at least sixty-five when and if we host it again. The feeling of disappointment that I shall probably never see a World Cup in England is absolutely massive, especially as it looked as though the bid this time was a very good one.
Failed
There are a number of reasons why England’s bid could have failed and much of it surrounds the English media. I won’t go on about the ridiculous Panarama programme again here because I ranted about it enough yesterday. Suffice to say it was seriously damaging to England’s chances.
Prior to that programme we had the ‘investigation’ in an English newspaper that led to two of the twenty-four FIFA voting officials being suspended for corruption.
Media
Before that, we had a constant stream of criticism and abuse towards FIFA and it’s officials that Michel Platini pointed to the other day when asked if he thought English media reporting would have an effect on the result.
So I think we can safely say that the English media have played a significant part in ensuring that English fans don’t get to see a World Cup in their country. Thanks!
Violence
We also have to look at the terrible scenes of crowd violence at Birmingham on Wednesday evening, the night before the vote. That was hardly a overwhelming endorsement of the English claim that we had stamped out hooliganism in the country.
On top of all that we have the old problem that we English think we are the best in the world. We think we are the home of football and we think the rest of the world should understand that fact.
Arrogance
I can only assume that for people of other nations the smugness, arrogance and, let’s face it, delusion of the English is little short of staggering. How you must all chuckle when you see us telling the world that we are going to win the World Cup and then inevitably fail to get even close and then tell the world we are going to win the right to host the World Cup and then fail to even get close to that.
We tell the world that the Premier League is the best league there is. We tell the world that players such as Steve Gerrard and Wayne Rooney are the best there are. I wonder how Spanish and German people feel about those claims. Is the Premier League better than the leagues in those two countries? Would Gerrard or Rooney get in their national teams?
Turning
Maybe failing to get the 2018 World Cup following on from the abysmal failure of the team at the 2010 World Cup can be a turning point for English football. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if we realised that we aren’t quite as good as we think we are and that the rest of the world are laughing at us with good reason.
All in all, I think it is fair to say I’m a bit fed up! The bid team worked incredibly hard and deserve a great deal of credit, but they were always fighting against England’s self inflicted image from around the world.
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