Post by Macmoish on Dec 4, 2010 7:42:41 GMT
More pertinent long term than HOW England got screwed in the voting is what happens next in English football: If there really are reforms, etc.
Guardian/David Conn
England World Cup flop wakes up politicians to need for drastic reform
• England bid team to face grilling by select committee
• Inquiry will look into all aspects of how game is run
The whole structure and governance of English football is to come under the scrutiny of a parliamentary inquiry, following the failure of the Football Association's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. The House of Commons select committee for culture media and sport, chaired by the Conservative MP John Whittingdale, is expected to announce a major inquiry into the way the game is run, beginning in the new year.
The committee is set to meet early next month to agree the inquiry's scope and, given the failure of the bid, its members will consider including the conduct of the England campaign and the decision-making at Fifa.
Hugh Robertson, the sports minister who pledged in opposition to push for reforms, including strengthening the FA's independence and greater supporter representation, is likely to wait for the select committee's report before deciding what the government should do, if anything.
Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for culture media and sport, who yesterday described Fifa's thumbs-down to England as a "slap in the face", said in Zurich this week that the government must look at reforms to the English game. He is, though, expected to delegate the detail of the task to Robertson.
Although Hunt's immediate reaction focused on Fifa's conduct of the bidding process and the backstage dealing which, Hunt said, "eclipsed" consideration of the bids' technical merits, the committee may be expected to examine the conduct of the bid itself more critically than the politicians have done so far.
Known for being thorough in their research, the committee may want to assess the wisdom of spending £18m on the bid at a time of economic crisis and cuts to the sporting infrastructure, the internal problems the FA had agreeing on the board's make-up and the dealings the bid team had with Fifa and its executive committee members, to each of whom several personal visits were made.
Also under consideration will be the bid team's relations with the media, culminating in the revelations in Monday's BBC Panorama programme. The documentary made allegations, based on an internal document, that Fifa executive committee members, including three who were named, took bribes totalling $100m (£63.5m). In an effort to distance themselves, the England bid team, now complaining of dishonesty in voting intentions from Fifa executive committee members, derided the programme as "an embarrassment to the BBC".
The bid's chief executive Andy Anson, the chief of staff Simon Greenberg, and board members, including Lord Coe and the former Conservative Party chairman Lord Mawhinney, could be asked to appear for questioning. Select committee hearings have parliamentary privilege, which means witnesses are free to talk without fear of being sued for defamation.
The inquiry is certain to include the thorny domestic issues which have been the subject of previous parliamentary efforts: the unequal distribution of money in the game; the failure of the national team, ownership and governance of clubs, the often hostile relationship between the Premier League and FA, the structure and board make-up at both bodies, representation of supporters and of all sections of society in decision-making, youth development and the grassroots.
Former Treasury mandarin Lord Burns reviewed the FA, the game's overall governing body, in 2005, recommending that the 92-member rule-making council be expanded and that the board should incorporate an independent chairman and two independent directors. The board is deadlocked between five representatives of the amateur, "national" game and five from the professional game – three from the Premier League, two from the Football League.
It took a huge struggle to persuade the national game board members that an independent chairman, ultimately Lord Triesman, should be appointed, but no non-executive directors ever have. Triesman resigned in May following a tabloid sting about which he has since complained to the Press Complaints Commission, and the FA has now removed the requirement that the chairman be independent. Roger Burden, the acting chairman, said recently he would stand to be permanent chairman, but threw the process open by withdrawing yesterday, citing disgust with Fifa's executive committee members.
The Premier League, all-powerful and hugely wealthy, a breakaway in 1992 from the more equal sharing arrangements within the Football League, habitually pontificates on the FA's shortcomings but has itself only a two-man board – the chairman, Sir Dave Richards, and the chief executive, Richard Scudamore – which many in football believe to be inadequate.
The select committee's inquiry will follow the Labour government's Football Task Force which reported in 1999, and two reports by the All Party Parliamentary Football Group, whose chairman, the Labour MP Alan Keen, sits on the committee. Those reports called for a more equal distribution of the Premier League's TV revenue and reforms to its board, but the group's recommendations, like those of Burns, were not implemented.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/dec/04/england-world-cup-2018-bid-inquest
David Lacey/The Guardian
England now in danger of falling off the radar altogether
The national team are the big losers and, worse still, their biggest incentive to improve was removed in Zurich this week
On the eve of the 1974 World Cup Stanley Rous lost the Fifa presidency to the Brazilian João Havelange, who had been busy wooing third world votes. As a bemused Rous left the hall in Frankfurt a reporter asked him why he had been ousted. "You'd better ask them in there," he replied. England's World Cup bid team in Zurich could have said the same thing after being humiliated in their efforts to host the next tournament but one. Presentations mean nothing without political nous, and where the latter is concerned England are the Candides of world football.
The contrasting expressions on the faces of the interested parties as Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, announced the winners said everything about the state of English football. Prince William, an Aston Villa fan, and David Dein, late of Arsenal, looked glum whereas Andrey Arshavin, an Arsenal player, and Chelsea's Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, were overjoyed. Whatever happened, the Premier League could not lose, such is the multi-national nature of the beast.
The England team is the big loser. Knowing that the 2018 World Cup was going to be staged in this country would have restored the side to the forefront of the nation's consciousness whereas it is now in danger of falling off the radar altogether.
Poor performances in the past two World Cups have yet to be redeemed by Fabio Capello's side as they strive to qualify for the next European Championship, a competition in which England's record is even less distinguished. The team is short of genuine international quality and there is little sign of a new generation of budding talents coming through. The prospect of putting on a World Cup again would surely have added weight to the Football Association's long-delayed plans for a national coaching centre, even if the idea of producing world-class players by 2018 was always a little far-fetched given that the coaches have to be found first.
Watching Barcelona's largely homegrown team outclass Real Madrid 5-0 on Monday night with the best exhibition of co-ordinated, intuitive attacking football since ... well, since Barcelona won 8-0 in Almería the week before, added relevance to a comment which appeared in the FA Yearbook. "The great challenge to British football is to find the answer to the techniques used by opponents in Europe and South America ... We have to train our players so that they can adapt their play to warm climates, hard grounds and the different techniques of teams abroad."
Those words appeared in 1961, when England were preparing to go to the World Cup in Chile the following year. Naturally they went out in the quarter-finals, beaten 3-1 by Brazil – the eventual winners – although by then English thoughts were on the tournament they were due to host in 1966. Winning the World Cup that year gave the domestic game a considerable boost. The following season league attendances rose by 1.2m, a new female audience was created, televised football came of age and the commercial possibilities were realised for the first time. Before 1966 English football was a sport, afterwards it became a product.
Sadly, there is no chance of another shot in the arm in 2018. More critically for the game itself, there must now be the real possibility that football in England will become even more of an international mish-mash which may continue to feature some outstanding players, Uefa's restrictions on club debts notwithstanding, but will lose even more of its identity.
For all the fond memories of 1966 it is still hard to avoid the feeling that after the triumph of Alf Ramsey's side the English game passed up a chance to re-examine itself; England were the world champions and surely had nothing to learn. So when Holland and West Germany started playing total football in the early 70s the English product again appeared outdated.
Teams such as Bob Paisley's Liverpool managed to catch up and Ron Greenwood's England started to close the gap. But now the game played by Englishmen, who make up less than half of the Premier League, is once more falling behind and after what happened in Zurich, the biggest incentive to learn afresh is no longer there.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/dec/03/england-world-cup-bid-2018-russia
THE GUARDIAN/PAUL HAYWARD
Retreat and revenge: England's options after their 2018 World Cup snub\England can respond to Fifa's vindictiveness by focusing on Uefa and the ultimate cause: building a world-beating team
A speech bubble expressing Fifa's thoughts about England would read: "We don't like you. Go away and don't come back."
Antipathy in the world governing body's view of the mother country turned spectacularly to malice when only one of the 21 neutrals on the executive committee voted for England's 2018 World Cup bid. The ruthlessness was worthy of Vladimir Putin, who swept into Zurich later to proclaim Russia's victory.
In the land of neutrality, complete disengagement became the only course for a country that can have no hope of staging a World Cup until Fifa is reformed from the janitor up. The Alps will be molehills before the gerontocracy at Fifa House love the English, with their omnipotent Premier League and awkward media, who are oddly resistant to the idea they exist to conspire in the concealment of corruption.
Like Bernie Ecclestone's F1 circus, the World Cup is going on the road and crossing frontiers. England yelp their indignation but are invisible, irrelevant. Geoff Thompson, their only representative at the top level, evokes Trotsky's line about the "useful idiot" who thinks he wields influence but is being manipulated by those above him.
Thompson, who will be replaced, is the quiet gentleman who provides a veneer of English representation. To Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, he is the perfect tool. Blatter would despair to see a Richard Scudamore stride into Fifa House. It would be like Margaret Thatcher marching into the EU all over again. The Premier League's chief executive would have no time for Blatter, either. He observes Fifa's carve-ups with detachment. Then he flies back to the world of the big clubs and forgets all about this obsession with World Cups.
England's choice is plain: drive deeper into Fifa politics and fight for the national interest or give up and have nothing to do with their coaching schemes, "international projects" and PR stunts. There must be a price for the vindictiveness that caused the best technical bid for 2018 to traipse in last, and the Football Association should exact all the revenge it can by retreating towards Uefa and concentrating on the most urgent task of all: curing the malaise on the field, where England are about as good as their leaders are at politics.
"England have had little or no influence. We are considered to be arrogant and know-alls," Graham Taylor, the former England manager, said. "I would advise any future England bid team not to bother, until the system changes," Andy Anson, the bid chief executive, said. If there is one charge for Anson and his team to answer, beyond excessive idealism, it is their appalling sycophancy in relation to the Sunday Times and Panorama corruption allegations.
To write letters referring to Fifa executive committee members as "our friends" and accuse the British media of being "unpatriotic" was not only reprehensible but naive. Somehow they thought distancing themselves from journalistic scrutiny would buy them points with an organisation that was never going to send the 2018 tournament to England anyway. Russia's victory has the look of a Blue Peter cake. "Here's one we made earlier", Blatter might have said.
Splendid isolation is hypocritical. Had England won then Prince William might still be bear-hugging Blatter two days later, and there would be no recitation of moral reservations about "the process", the duplicity of ExCo members or the need for reform. The media would be asked not to delve into Fifa's books and the British government would sign away its sovereignty to a private club in Switzerland who would set up a tax-free republic for six weeks in the shires.
For that reason some will feel relieved the English bid was wiped out. No more spurious friendlies in Trinidad and Tobago to please Jack Warner, who cast his vote elsewhere anyway; no more delusions about England's standing in the world game. The "football's coming home" rhetoric was dumped this time round but it made no difference to Fifa's view that the English radiate a sense of entitlement.
All this is mere context to the cold reality that Blatter and friends were desperate to send 2018 to Russia. Qatar's victory for 2022 accentuates that point. Fifa elected to deliver all its shocks at once. England were safe but unexciting. Much better to open up Russian football to expansion and bring Arab petro-dollars into the picture. To land that double bonanza Fifa humiliated England, Australia and America: three developed powers who were all stunned by how they were treated.
England were not alone but they have the biggest decision to make. Or maybe not, in the sense that they have no chance now of escaping pariah status, and so may as well retreat. David Beckham is known to be aggrieved that all his work for Fifa was rewarded with false promises of votes. For an instant it seemed England had found their Michel Platini or Franz Beckenbauer: not a statesman, but certainly an ambassador. Fifa, though, has seen the last of Beckham in a ceremonial role.
Correcting the structural weaknesses of the English game always felt more important than winning a World Cup bid. If in doubt, we might rewatch Germany v England at the World Cup or England v France at Wembley last month. We await the formation of a 30-person task force, with a £15m budget, to produce a national curriculum, in the French or German style.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/dec/03/revenge-retreat-england-2018-world-cup
Guardian/David Conn
England World Cup flop wakes up politicians to need for drastic reform
• England bid team to face grilling by select committee
• Inquiry will look into all aspects of how game is run
The whole structure and governance of English football is to come under the scrutiny of a parliamentary inquiry, following the failure of the Football Association's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. The House of Commons select committee for culture media and sport, chaired by the Conservative MP John Whittingdale, is expected to announce a major inquiry into the way the game is run, beginning in the new year.
The committee is set to meet early next month to agree the inquiry's scope and, given the failure of the bid, its members will consider including the conduct of the England campaign and the decision-making at Fifa.
Hugh Robertson, the sports minister who pledged in opposition to push for reforms, including strengthening the FA's independence and greater supporter representation, is likely to wait for the select committee's report before deciding what the government should do, if anything.
Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for culture media and sport, who yesterday described Fifa's thumbs-down to England as a "slap in the face", said in Zurich this week that the government must look at reforms to the English game. He is, though, expected to delegate the detail of the task to Robertson.
Although Hunt's immediate reaction focused on Fifa's conduct of the bidding process and the backstage dealing which, Hunt said, "eclipsed" consideration of the bids' technical merits, the committee may be expected to examine the conduct of the bid itself more critically than the politicians have done so far.
Known for being thorough in their research, the committee may want to assess the wisdom of spending £18m on the bid at a time of economic crisis and cuts to the sporting infrastructure, the internal problems the FA had agreeing on the board's make-up and the dealings the bid team had with Fifa and its executive committee members, to each of whom several personal visits were made.
Also under consideration will be the bid team's relations with the media, culminating in the revelations in Monday's BBC Panorama programme. The documentary made allegations, based on an internal document, that Fifa executive committee members, including three who were named, took bribes totalling $100m (£63.5m). In an effort to distance themselves, the England bid team, now complaining of dishonesty in voting intentions from Fifa executive committee members, derided the programme as "an embarrassment to the BBC".
The bid's chief executive Andy Anson, the chief of staff Simon Greenberg, and board members, including Lord Coe and the former Conservative Party chairman Lord Mawhinney, could be asked to appear for questioning. Select committee hearings have parliamentary privilege, which means witnesses are free to talk without fear of being sued for defamation.
The inquiry is certain to include the thorny domestic issues which have been the subject of previous parliamentary efforts: the unequal distribution of money in the game; the failure of the national team, ownership and governance of clubs, the often hostile relationship between the Premier League and FA, the structure and board make-up at both bodies, representation of supporters and of all sections of society in decision-making, youth development and the grassroots.
Former Treasury mandarin Lord Burns reviewed the FA, the game's overall governing body, in 2005, recommending that the 92-member rule-making council be expanded and that the board should incorporate an independent chairman and two independent directors. The board is deadlocked between five representatives of the amateur, "national" game and five from the professional game – three from the Premier League, two from the Football League.
It took a huge struggle to persuade the national game board members that an independent chairman, ultimately Lord Triesman, should be appointed, but no non-executive directors ever have. Triesman resigned in May following a tabloid sting about which he has since complained to the Press Complaints Commission, and the FA has now removed the requirement that the chairman be independent. Roger Burden, the acting chairman, said recently he would stand to be permanent chairman, but threw the process open by withdrawing yesterday, citing disgust with Fifa's executive committee members.
The Premier League, all-powerful and hugely wealthy, a breakaway in 1992 from the more equal sharing arrangements within the Football League, habitually pontificates on the FA's shortcomings but has itself only a two-man board – the chairman, Sir Dave Richards, and the chief executive, Richard Scudamore – which many in football believe to be inadequate.
The select committee's inquiry will follow the Labour government's Football Task Force which reported in 1999, and two reports by the All Party Parliamentary Football Group, whose chairman, the Labour MP Alan Keen, sits on the committee. Those reports called for a more equal distribution of the Premier League's TV revenue and reforms to its board, but the group's recommendations, like those of Burns, were not implemented.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/dec/04/england-world-cup-2018-bid-inquest
David Lacey/The Guardian
England now in danger of falling off the radar altogether
The national team are the big losers and, worse still, their biggest incentive to improve was removed in Zurich this week
On the eve of the 1974 World Cup Stanley Rous lost the Fifa presidency to the Brazilian João Havelange, who had been busy wooing third world votes. As a bemused Rous left the hall in Frankfurt a reporter asked him why he had been ousted. "You'd better ask them in there," he replied. England's World Cup bid team in Zurich could have said the same thing after being humiliated in their efforts to host the next tournament but one. Presentations mean nothing without political nous, and where the latter is concerned England are the Candides of world football.
The contrasting expressions on the faces of the interested parties as Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, announced the winners said everything about the state of English football. Prince William, an Aston Villa fan, and David Dein, late of Arsenal, looked glum whereas Andrey Arshavin, an Arsenal player, and Chelsea's Russian owner, Roman Abramovich, were overjoyed. Whatever happened, the Premier League could not lose, such is the multi-national nature of the beast.
The England team is the big loser. Knowing that the 2018 World Cup was going to be staged in this country would have restored the side to the forefront of the nation's consciousness whereas it is now in danger of falling off the radar altogether.
Poor performances in the past two World Cups have yet to be redeemed by Fabio Capello's side as they strive to qualify for the next European Championship, a competition in which England's record is even less distinguished. The team is short of genuine international quality and there is little sign of a new generation of budding talents coming through. The prospect of putting on a World Cup again would surely have added weight to the Football Association's long-delayed plans for a national coaching centre, even if the idea of producing world-class players by 2018 was always a little far-fetched given that the coaches have to be found first.
Watching Barcelona's largely homegrown team outclass Real Madrid 5-0 on Monday night with the best exhibition of co-ordinated, intuitive attacking football since ... well, since Barcelona won 8-0 in Almería the week before, added relevance to a comment which appeared in the FA Yearbook. "The great challenge to British football is to find the answer to the techniques used by opponents in Europe and South America ... We have to train our players so that they can adapt their play to warm climates, hard grounds and the different techniques of teams abroad."
Those words appeared in 1961, when England were preparing to go to the World Cup in Chile the following year. Naturally they went out in the quarter-finals, beaten 3-1 by Brazil – the eventual winners – although by then English thoughts were on the tournament they were due to host in 1966. Winning the World Cup that year gave the domestic game a considerable boost. The following season league attendances rose by 1.2m, a new female audience was created, televised football came of age and the commercial possibilities were realised for the first time. Before 1966 English football was a sport, afterwards it became a product.
Sadly, there is no chance of another shot in the arm in 2018. More critically for the game itself, there must now be the real possibility that football in England will become even more of an international mish-mash which may continue to feature some outstanding players, Uefa's restrictions on club debts notwithstanding, but will lose even more of its identity.
For all the fond memories of 1966 it is still hard to avoid the feeling that after the triumph of Alf Ramsey's side the English game passed up a chance to re-examine itself; England were the world champions and surely had nothing to learn. So when Holland and West Germany started playing total football in the early 70s the English product again appeared outdated.
Teams such as Bob Paisley's Liverpool managed to catch up and Ron Greenwood's England started to close the gap. But now the game played by Englishmen, who make up less than half of the Premier League, is once more falling behind and after what happened in Zurich, the biggest incentive to learn afresh is no longer there.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/dec/03/england-world-cup-bid-2018-russia
THE GUARDIAN/PAUL HAYWARD
Retreat and revenge: England's options after their 2018 World Cup snub\England can respond to Fifa's vindictiveness by focusing on Uefa and the ultimate cause: building a world-beating team
A speech bubble expressing Fifa's thoughts about England would read: "We don't like you. Go away and don't come back."
Antipathy in the world governing body's view of the mother country turned spectacularly to malice when only one of the 21 neutrals on the executive committee voted for England's 2018 World Cup bid. The ruthlessness was worthy of Vladimir Putin, who swept into Zurich later to proclaim Russia's victory.
In the land of neutrality, complete disengagement became the only course for a country that can have no hope of staging a World Cup until Fifa is reformed from the janitor up. The Alps will be molehills before the gerontocracy at Fifa House love the English, with their omnipotent Premier League and awkward media, who are oddly resistant to the idea they exist to conspire in the concealment of corruption.
Like Bernie Ecclestone's F1 circus, the World Cup is going on the road and crossing frontiers. England yelp their indignation but are invisible, irrelevant. Geoff Thompson, their only representative at the top level, evokes Trotsky's line about the "useful idiot" who thinks he wields influence but is being manipulated by those above him.
Thompson, who will be replaced, is the quiet gentleman who provides a veneer of English representation. To Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, he is the perfect tool. Blatter would despair to see a Richard Scudamore stride into Fifa House. It would be like Margaret Thatcher marching into the EU all over again. The Premier League's chief executive would have no time for Blatter, either. He observes Fifa's carve-ups with detachment. Then he flies back to the world of the big clubs and forgets all about this obsession with World Cups.
England's choice is plain: drive deeper into Fifa politics and fight for the national interest or give up and have nothing to do with their coaching schemes, "international projects" and PR stunts. There must be a price for the vindictiveness that caused the best technical bid for 2018 to traipse in last, and the Football Association should exact all the revenge it can by retreating towards Uefa and concentrating on the most urgent task of all: curing the malaise on the field, where England are about as good as their leaders are at politics.
"England have had little or no influence. We are considered to be arrogant and know-alls," Graham Taylor, the former England manager, said. "I would advise any future England bid team not to bother, until the system changes," Andy Anson, the bid chief executive, said. If there is one charge for Anson and his team to answer, beyond excessive idealism, it is their appalling sycophancy in relation to the Sunday Times and Panorama corruption allegations.
To write letters referring to Fifa executive committee members as "our friends" and accuse the British media of being "unpatriotic" was not only reprehensible but naive. Somehow they thought distancing themselves from journalistic scrutiny would buy them points with an organisation that was never going to send the 2018 tournament to England anyway. Russia's victory has the look of a Blue Peter cake. "Here's one we made earlier", Blatter might have said.
Splendid isolation is hypocritical. Had England won then Prince William might still be bear-hugging Blatter two days later, and there would be no recitation of moral reservations about "the process", the duplicity of ExCo members or the need for reform. The media would be asked not to delve into Fifa's books and the British government would sign away its sovereignty to a private club in Switzerland who would set up a tax-free republic for six weeks in the shires.
For that reason some will feel relieved the English bid was wiped out. No more spurious friendlies in Trinidad and Tobago to please Jack Warner, who cast his vote elsewhere anyway; no more delusions about England's standing in the world game. The "football's coming home" rhetoric was dumped this time round but it made no difference to Fifa's view that the English radiate a sense of entitlement.
All this is mere context to the cold reality that Blatter and friends were desperate to send 2018 to Russia. Qatar's victory for 2022 accentuates that point. Fifa elected to deliver all its shocks at once. England were safe but unexciting. Much better to open up Russian football to expansion and bring Arab petro-dollars into the picture. To land that double bonanza Fifa humiliated England, Australia and America: three developed powers who were all stunned by how they were treated.
England were not alone but they have the biggest decision to make. Or maybe not, in the sense that they have no chance now of escaping pariah status, and so may as well retreat. David Beckham is known to be aggrieved that all his work for Fifa was rewarded with false promises of votes. For an instant it seemed England had found their Michel Platini or Franz Beckenbauer: not a statesman, but certainly an ambassador. Fifa, though, has seen the last of Beckham in a ceremonial role.
Correcting the structural weaknesses of the English game always felt more important than winning a World Cup bid. If in doubt, we might rewatch Germany v England at the World Cup or England v France at Wembley last month. We await the formation of a 30-person task force, with a £15m budget, to produce a national curriculum, in the French or German style.
www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2010/dec/03/revenge-retreat-england-2018-world-cup