Qatar 2022: eyeball to eyeball over football

Every year the great and good of the football family descend on SW6 for a sporting jamboree relevant not for witnessing new talent, but gossip.

‘Leaders in football’ hosts Fifa delegates, League chairmen, anti-corruption experts, marketing executives – you name it, in the world of professional sport, they beeline for here.

And all to stay on the inside track.  For there’s good reason. Leave it long enough and footy gossip eventually gets round to match-fixing. Vote-fixing. And of course political-fixing.

It all goes on, everybody knows it all goes on, and the power players behind the scenes want to keep tabs on each other – just as players on the pitch will study the strengths and weaknesses of their match day opponents.

‘High risk’

And so it was I found myself sitting next to the Qatari delegation as the head of the Fifa technical inspection team who assessed all the bids for both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups gave his thoughts on when the Qatar tournament should ultimately be played.  Winter, or summer? That old chestnut.

The Qatari crew muttered and fidgeted as Mayne-Nicholls ran through his suggestions. Mayne-Nicholls deadpanned on.

Harold Mayne-Nicholls is the man who warned hosting a World Cup in the relentless heat of a Middle East summer would be “high risk”.

But Mayne-Nicholls is also someone who’s got his ear close enough to the opaque workings of Fifa’s decision-making board – the executive committee – to have noticed that before the vote took place, back in December 2010, several of the “exco” appeared to have already made up their minds to back Qatar.

And it is curious indeed that he explains when he first presented his findings to the exco, there was no discussion about the quite obviously high-risk element of the Qatari bid – the heat.

Read more: 10 reasons to be happy about a winter World Cup

I may add here that my helpful Qatari neighbour grumbled in my ear – quite rightly – that no one had questioned one of the key faults of the (ultimately failed) USA bid – that their government had provided no underwriting guarantees.

Something Qatar fastidiously did.  For it is one of Fifa’s key bidding stipulations.  But I digress.

Qatar, seriously?

For Mayne-Nicholls adds that had the exco been performing its job properly, the Qatari bid would probably have been overlooked at the first.

In other words, the heat-risk was just too high for the bid to be considered seriously.  And as we now all know, Fifa studiously ignored him.

One can draw many conclusions from the above, and lest we forget Fifa have appointed a lawyer to investigate allegations of corruption.  But it’s also worth adding many Fifa-watchers say Michael Garcia is not a boat rocker.

They say he wasn’t first, second, or even third choice for the job. Plus the body responsible for reforming Fifa governance has now concluded its work – only for its chair to raise  doubts about whether football’s governing body really has now learnt it’s lesson.

Money and politics

Which all comes back to Fifa’s main role – the only task anyone outside football really cares about – deciding on the destination for a World Cup.

And that, even Mayne-Nicholls says, is about more than technical feasibility. If that was the case, so the joke goes in Fifa circles, it would never be held anywhere other than Germany.

World Cups are about emotion, new places, football forging across frontiers. And money.

And yes, politics. A heady combination at the best of times.

Now there are many fine reasons for the Middle East to have a shot at hosting a World Cup.

And while Qatar might not have the football heritage of say Egypt, or even Saudi, it clearly has the kind of wealth and political stability a competition like the World Cup requires.

Eyeball to eyeball

Much of this has been lost in the incredulity that Qatar actually pulled it off.  But how much of that is because of their tenacity in legitimately working the system? And how much of it might be down to something more nefarious in the backwoods of Fifa?

The fact remains Qatar did it. And they’re serious about it. In Sepp Blatter’s words, the World Cup 2022 “will be played in Qatar”. Adding, with a rhetorical flourish, “Voila”.

But that doesn’t stop them watching what everyone is saying about them. While everyone else keeps watching them.

Eyeball to eyeball.  London, Zurich, or Doha. And the gossip? It will continue. For another nine long years…

Follow Keme Nzerem on Twitter.