The recent revelations made by former FA chairman Lord Triesman’s claims to Parliament’s football governance inquiry that FIFA’s Jack Warner, Nicolas Leoz, Worawi Makudi and Ricardo Teixeira asked for a variety of bribes in return for their England 2018 World Cup vote were hardly surprising. We all know FIFA is corrupt, especially the bid process, but the truly shocking revelation about the Qatari bid from a whistle blower inside the Qatari bid team are now threatening to bring about some long awaited justice and strip the tiny Gulf nation of the tournament.
Now I’ve been a pretty big critic of the Qatari bid from the start, and frankly it was absurd to even allow a bit from a country of 1.6 million people, no football culture, and 50C temperatures in the summer. But that said, if they had won the bid fair and square they deserved to hold it, but we all know they didn’t. Politics in the Gulf is marked by bribery, corruption, and nepotism and the Qataris brought that perspective with them, along with a lack of any sense of irony or cynicism to FIFA. It won’t surprise many that a government based on bribery, corruption, and nepotism found fertile ground in which to plant itself in Zurich, but what was surprising was how they seemed to think no one would notice what was going on.
Well now there is evidence behind it, and a re-vote seems possible, but unlikely. I hope they strip Qatar of the World Cup, and give it the second place bid, the United States. A re-vote would inevitably be marred by further allegations of corruption, and another bid process would be too costly. Qatar has lost all credibility, and no matter how much money they spend, they can’t hide now.
Let’s hope justice will be served.
Written by: Matthew Wall, editor, soccerprose.com
Don’t get too excited.
Qatar has already denied all these allegations and are welcoming the investigations with open arms cause they know they didn’t bribe.
I don’t get why it’s so hard to believe that we won.. but we did. You think Qatar doesn’t have football culture? I’m sorry have you even BEEN to qatar, nevertheless the middle east? Football is what we live for. It’s a part of our society. It’s become a part of what we love and always has.
So, before you try to falsely accuse us, get your information straight.
Everyone should respect that we won the bid and get over it! 🙂
Don’t forget the Qatar uses slave labour & human trafficking who live in slave camps, working for $2 per day to construct their buildings & stadiums.. Many of these workers commit suicide and die in the heat…The Gulf has breach basic human rights, ppl who have lived in Gulf for more than 50 Years, they are not allowed to get citizenship or even permanent residency in those countries. They have a very cruel system against certain nationalities, unfortunately most ppl are not aware of this.
More over what is there in Qatar, poor infrastructure, poor business culture,red tape, every thing is expensive and as JBY indicated they don’t consider expat workers from third world countries as human beings.
I prefer UAE in middle east than Qatar, even though they are not that good in human rights but world class facilities & quality.