England's failed World Cup bid was "League One, not Premier League" says Qatar mastermind

By Andrew Warshaw

December 6 – The man behind Qatar’s successful marketing campaign for the 2022 World Cup says England’s failure to secure the event in 2018 is as much down to their own failings as any perceived broken promises by FIFA voting members.

England’s World Cup bid chiefs have reacted with a non-stop barrage of criticism against the process for awarding World Cups but Mike Lee (pictured) says the reasons for England’s failure lie much closer to home and that the campaign was in fact way below top standard.

“You can understand the frustration and disappointment but I’m not sure it’s healthy to blame everyone else and not reflect on the campaign itself,” said Lee, who has a track record of winning bids, not least the London 2012 Olympics and Rio four years later.

“From the choice of the wrong bid leader [Lord Triesman] in the first instance through to alienating the Premier League and a series of PR own-goals, it has not been a success.

“A lot was made of how it was not going to repeat the mistakes of 2006 but it actually repeated many of them.

“If I’m being absolutely brutal, this England bid campaign was not Premier League, it was relegation and League One.

“It was clear to us all Lord Triesman was not the right choice.

“He was not popular among his colleagues in English football.

“He was terribly unpopular in international football and for nearly 60 per cent of the campaign we were hampered.”

Lee paid tribute to the roles of both David Beckham and international bid President David Dein, whom he said would be an excellent choice as the next FA chairman now that Roger Burden has ended his interest.

But he stressed England’s inability to cultivate sufficiently strong relationships with the 22 FIFA executive committee members, and the corridors of power in UEFA.

“We must develop a much more international outlook to the way we work in terms of UEFA and FIFA,” argued Lee on BBC Radio.

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