Nil Points.

A few days have passed now since the big decision not to give England the 2018 World Cup and the dust has hardly settled. It was on Thursday when Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, opened his envelope and revealed that it would be Russia who would be hosting it. Not England, not Spain/Portugal, not Belgium/Netherlands. But Russia. Fair enough.

The backlash to it has been fierce in places, and you can understand it to a degree. England’s bid, which was clearly the best bid on the table in terms of stadia, transportation, history and policing, managed a mere two votes and was subsequently eliminated from the running in the first round. At that point I was desperately looking round for Graham Norton, it’s like Eurovision all over again!

How does this happen? How does the best bid come out last? Well the probable reasons have all been surfacing over the last few days. Primarily the blame is being put at the BBC’s door for airing Panorama, a show that looked into the controversial subject of corruption within football’s world governing body, Fifa, claiming that three officials took bribes in the 1990s and that Fifa vice-president Jack Warner is still to this day involved in selling on tickets to touts. This was aired on Monday.

Obviously the bid team tried to calm it down branding the programme ‘an embarrassment’. Many have said they shouldn’t have aired it before the host nation was revealed. I personally think they should have aired it, we have a free press, deal with it Fifa. But to be honest, what did it matter? England were not going to win the bid anyway. That much is clear. We sent David Beckham, PM David Cameron and even Prince William and they still couldn’t persuade them to choose England’s bid. It’s not exactly a secret that Fifa aren’t too keen on England.

Fifa’s main reasoning is that they wanted to give the tournament to a ‘developing’ nation. Which they seem to be doing recently during Sepp Blatter’s era in charge. He awarded South Africa with the 2010 tournament, and now Russia and Qatar have benefited from his methods. So if this was Sepp’s big plan, why did England even bother making a bid in the first place. Why did we waste £15 million just to sit there and take last place. Last place! Even Belgium beat us! We were beaten by a Blackadder punch-line!

Whatever the reasoning behind it, Fifa have certainly been under fire since. Commentators in England have been damning to say the least, with the whole thing just not smelling right. Roger Burden, acting chairman of the FA, has decided not to run for the position permanently stating that he can no longer work with Fifa as he can no longer trust them. Although this is seemingly a small drop in the ocean it will certainly rock Fifa’s boat and they will have to address this issue rather than ducking it as they have always done in the past.

There is a real sense of injustice and betrayal in the country. Apparently the bid team were promised more votes than the two they received, however they did not materialise. So did Fifa officials straight-up lie to our faces? Maybe they made the exact same promises to Russia. Who knows. Either way the system is a colossal failure that clearly needs to be changed. But don’t hold your breath.

Are Fifa corrupt? I don’t know, but there is a lot of smoke, that much is for sure. I don’t really mind Russia being awarded the tournament, it will be the first time an Eastern block nation has hosted the games, and Russia are actually an up and coming team in the world game. What I don’t understand is Qatar. In 2022 Qatar will host the World Cup. That’s right. Qatar.

They managed to win with their bid against the USA, Australia, Japan and South Korea. Now, okay don’t give it to the States, they had the World Cup in 1994 and Japan and South Korea both had it back in 2002, so they we’re never going to realistically get it. But I genuinely thought Australia would win it over Qatar. The Oceania Football Confederation has never hosted a World Cup, and although technically Australia now play as part of the Asian Football Confederation, they are their best chance of becoming hosts.

Australia, as a nation, are sporting mad. Football over there has boomed in recent years for whatever reasons. World Cup fever takes over the country every time it’s on. The A-League is making good progression even with the meagre resources it has. They have some of the most passionate supporters in the world who are always out in force in other nations when they hold their World Cups. Okay, it’s not the biggest sport in their country, it probably ranks behind Aussie rules and cricket, and maybe even rugby, but you’d be surprised to see how big football is getting over there. I really think they are a World Cup away from it really taking off over there. Giving the tournament to Qatar just feels like a missed opportunity by Fifa in all honesty.

Giving the 2022 World Cup to Qatar bemuses me. They will become the smallest country to host the games, and I seriously want to know how they hope they’re going to pull it off. All of the games will be a stone’s throw from one another; how on earth are they going to effectively police this? Surely it would have made more sense to share it with a neighbour, maybe Saudi Arabia, for example. It would be like hosting the World Cup in Glasgow, only with even more trouble. It gives hope to Liechtenstein’s next bid anyway.

But this isn’t the main reason why it bemuses me. During summer Qatar has a habit of reaching over 40’C. Celsius! Not Fahrenheit. Celsius! That….is…..insane! During the summer months Doha’s temperature varies between 35’C and 47’C. How are the players going to handle that? The standard of football will obviously drop but not only that, there’s a serious question whether this is going to be a safe place to play football. There will need to be water breaks, at least one or two per half, but not only for the players, the fans will need it just as much. There’s a huge health and safety risk here, people will get sunstroke, will dehydrate, and will faint. And these are just the minor health implications! It's alright being a local but what about the supporters who are coming from other nations? Let's say Sweden, they might not be used to the relentless heat of the Middle East.

There’s been talk of moving it to the much cooler Winter period. But that would disrupt every countries league seasons. It’s bad enough when the African Cup of Nations is on never mind a World Cup. I just love the fact that none of this has been brought up, Qatar have just been given the World Cup and now we have to sort it out. If Australia had the World Cup, it would have been in the middle of their Winter. Perfect.

Qatar winning the bid just highlight’s Fifa’s problem. It does make them look corrupt, even if they aren’t. Fifa’s current system is just wrong in my opinion. It encourages bribery and corruption. You literally have to win the vote of a Fifa official, so you go and talk to them and present your bid and hope you sway them into voting for you. So it’s understandable how bribes could exchange palms. At least we can be happy knowing that we didn’t grease them.

Because there are two rounds of voting I often get left confused as there have been cases where officials have voted with one in the first round and with another in the second round. I don’t think they should be allowed to make ‘promises’ to bid teams as it just isn’t right. Maybe Fifa just wanted to punish us for our media, or maybe it was just to embarrass us in front of the world.

Either way, football’s not coming home. Not for a long time.