The World Cup is gone. English football now needs some clear thinking about its future relations with the international game.
The disappointment of the Zurich vote that saw the 2018 World Cup awarded instead to Russia brought with it talk of breaking away from FIFA.
Such thoughts, moreover, were not confined to those whom one might easily write off as “extremists” in this context.
By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year
December 11 – Sergei Fursenko, the President of the Russian Football Union (RFU), has claimed that nationalist organisations were behind violent clashes involving Spartak Moscow fans that today claimed the life of one fan and left another 29 injured.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 10 – UEFA President Michel Platini says there was nothing wrong with last week’s controversial World Cup ballots which, he said, reflected a clear philosophy to take the tournament to new destinations.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 9 – Qatar’s insistence that hosting the 2022 World Cup in the heat of mid-summer would be negated by their revolutionary cooling plans has been questioned by the former head of their own confederation.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 8 – England’s beleaguered 2018 World Cup bid chairman Geoff Thompson (pictured) has broken his silence on his country’s two-vote humiliation by adding his voice to those who believe FIFA should have given clearer guidelines to bidding nations.
December 8 – A group of leading international football consultants has acquired Grass Roots Football LIVE, Britain’s premier event of its type held annually at the NEC in Birmingham.
By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year
December 8 – Jack Warner, the President of CONCACAF, has hit out at Jamaica’s national team for a series of cash demands they made during their successful defence of the Digicel Caribbean Cup.
So FIFA is corrupt, full of Executive members who look you in the eye and lie, and England is taking its ball home.
Should such a statement be put to the British public today, I am quite certain it would receive unanimous support. Even before the Zurich debacle, FIFA, and in particular President Sepp Blatter, would have struggled to win a popularity contest in the mother land of football. But I have rarely seen a country and its media so united in its condemnation of the organisation.
December 7 – Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has claimed that he hopes the Republic’s capital Grozny will be chosen to host a match when Russia stages the World Cup in 2018.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 7 – A member of FIFA’s own Ethics Committee has sensationally questioned Qatar being awarded the 2022 World Cup as suspicions continue to plague the tiny Middle East state’s credentials.
By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year
December 7 – Switzerland is concerned about the number of sports federations based there who have been accused of corruption, the country’s Sports Minister Ueli Maurer admitted today.
By Duncan Mackay
British Sports Internet Writer of the Year
December 7 – Some FIFA Executive Committee members believed that the accusations of corruption levelled at them by the Sunday Times·were motivated by racism, Japan’s World Cup bid leader·Junji Ogura claimed today.
The uninformed, largely bigoted vitriol being aimed at Qatar after they were awarded the World Cup 2022 would it appear, be for no other reason than they had a successful bid.
I should declare in advance that I am a “fan” of many of the Gulf nations having worked in and visited a number of them, including Qatar.
Legacy is important to FIFA, something we have largely ignored in England when reacting to the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
By Andrew Warshaw
December 6 – Future FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce today denied he had given up the post in protest at England’s 2018 World Cup elimination.
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.