Why Jack is quite the lad
It’s something that I’m very proud of: especially because it’s listened to by a huge audience. Details are unnecessary. Let’s just say it smashes any television viewing figure in the UK.
Naturally, every four years, we’re obligated to record the breadth of bids to stage the World Cup in the years to come and, currently, that involves those for 2018 and 2022. It’s necessary but that doesn’t mean I find it easy to swallow.
Let me explain.
Over the last two weeks we’ve carried reports from Trinidad & Tobago regarding the visits of Ruud Gullit, pushing the joint bid of Holland and Belgium, and David Beckham, lauding England’s hopes of staging 2018.
Their target is Jack Warner who effectively controls CONCACAF – a body that includes Central America (including Mexico), North America (including the USA that now limits its ambitions to landing 2022) and the Caribbean (Warner’s fiefdom). Ludicrously, Warner has three of the 24 FIFA votes at his disposal. Worse, he hopes to increase that influence to four.
Now this is a man whose bone fides are less than whole. His ‘travel agency’ controlled ticket distribution for the Trinidad & Tobago allocation when the island qualified for the World Cup in 2006: totally against regulations; at huge profit. Yet he’s STILL a FIFA vice-president.
And his nation’s players are still waiting to be paid the promised bonuses for the tournament despite judges, in separate countries, TWICE saying they were in the right. The federation is making a third appeal against those judgments without the slightest justification.
To his shame, Beckham claims that Warner is a friend. Perhaps so, but I don’t think David is that stupid.
However, that isn’t the extent of the nonsense we’re meant to swallow. The former captain of England says that his country winning the right to stage the World Cup would leave a lasting legacy not only for England but for the “entire World”.
We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Drop the word ‘legacy’ into the mix and we’re all meant to bow down and worship. ‘Legacy’ was the key to South Africa staging the event. We were persuaded, well, some people were, that the whole continent of Africa would benefit from having a World Cup, not just the host country. And, where is the evidence?
Once the FIFA bandwagon moved on, its bank accounts swollen, all South Africa was left with was a mistaken view that it staged a great tournament and a number of spanking new arenas that it can’t possibly make economically viable. Ask South Africa in a decade if it benefited: a bit like mentioning the word ‘Olympics’ to the folk of Atlanta or Athens.
And, what is Beckham’s argument regarding a ‘legacy to the world’? It’s so transparent, it’s laughable. He talks about his ‘acclaimed’ soccer schools spreading the gospel. What shallow, arrogant, self-interested nonsense: the planet quivers in its worship of someone who, arguably, has never said anything worth listening to.
Unfortunately, the pursuit of a World Cup is wholly distasteful. You’re forced into sucking up to reprobates like Warner, people you wouldn’t normally give the time of day to. No World Cup is worth it.
I don’t intend working for another eight years. Not even a World Cup in my adopted home will change my mind. And, anyway, I’d put my money on Russia getting it in 2018. While the English talk, mostly spouting rubbish, the Russians ‘spend’.
