Thursday, October 11, 2007

Blatter clearing the 2018 field for England?

Everyone's favorite Sepp is making news again as the FIFA president has told advisors that he wants to do away with the World Cup rotational system. Now all the boss needs in order to make this thought into a fact is the approval of the executive committee, which is all but certain.

The new rule will allow any continent to bid on the finals except for the hosts of the most recent two finals.

Had the rotational system stayed in place, Concacaf would get the 2018 finals, which would mean either the US, Mexico or Canada would play host. However, it now looks like the plan to rotate through all the confederations will stop a bit short.

But what makes England so interesting to Blatter? Could it have something to do with their World Cup ambassador?
An English bid, which has the support of prime minister Gordon Brown, will face competition from China, Australia, Russia and possibly Italy. Brown's World Cup ambassador, Richard Caborn, is currently considering offers of support from consultancy firms, including one with exceptionally close ties to Blatter.
But the fun doesn't stop there:
The bid could also be boosted by the announcement that Lord Coe, chairman of Fifa's ethics commission, will act as the watchdog for the bidding process. Coe's role with Fifa has attracted criticism, largely because in the year since its foundation his commission has met only once and, because it cannot act retrospectively, has not tackled any of the serious allegations levelled against Fifa, including those made against the vice-president Jack Warner.
So let's see, England might hire a consulting firm with close ties to Blatter while the enter bidding process is being watched over by a former English athlete who is in charge of a 'major' committee on ethics that has only met once. Yeah, nothing to see here.

So will Concacaf ever get another World Cup?

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, really interesting post Mike, if there was a little more research into the points made and proof as to the intstallment of the aformentioned consultancy agency preceding England's bid for the World Cup it could be a very interesting revellation.
As to England's bid, it is about time that the country where the game itself was created has another crack at entertaining the tournament itself.
As for the rotation system itself, the whole idead of rotating the torunament across the gobe is farcical, look at South Africa for example, the country itself is in turmoil with regards to the economy and the infrastructure quite frankly is not there to host a tournament of such stature. In my opinion the World Cup should be left to European Countries where the stadia is in place or countries such as Australia or even the USA where the required facilities are already in place.
I'd be interested in finding ou what other people thought?

12:49 PM  
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9:04 PM  

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