In awarding the World Cup to Qatar, Fifa liked to trot out the line that it was entering markets – sorry, countries – that were as-yet untapped by the beautiful game.
The global jamboree was too Euro-centric, said the Swiss bloke whose swanky offices were in Switzerland, surrounded by countries that boasted the biggest and best leagues in the world.
Their intentions may have been honourable. But the methods that ended up with a World Cup in a desert were far more grimy. And the process began long before the fateful vote in 2010. Here’s a potted history.
8 May 1974: Joao Havelange elected president
The Big Bang of modern sporting corruption. Havelange’s solicitations of support from emerging African and Caribbean nations – 86 of them – in the presidential race, promising resources and representation (contrasting with his opponent and incumbent Stanley Rous, a pro-Apartheid Englishman) set the template for Fifa behaviour for the rest of the century.
The Brazilian former water polo player, son of an arms dealer and mate of Pele’s was a master at glad-handing. During his 24-year tenure as Fifa boss – overseeing six World Cups – he enlisted the help of gangsters, indulged in bribes for TV rights, cash (along with diamonds, fine art and bicycles) for votes and repeatedly used out-and-out nepotism in making appointments to Fifa’s top table. He was even responsible for enlisting Coca-Cola as a World Cup sponsor. Oh and he was also found to have taken over £21m in bribes in connection with World Cup marketing rights.
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If you are wondering how billion-pound sport TV deals came into the world you need look no further than this company, formed in Switzerland by Horst Dassler (the son of Adi, who founded adidas). ISL – International Sports And Leisure – was a sports marketing company which specialised in buying and selling of broadcast rights to Fifa and Olympic events. In 1987 the European rights to the next three World Cups were sold for $440m. The three tournaments from 1998 were sold for $2.2bn.
When ISL went bust in 2001, owing hundreds of millions of pounds, it was found that it had paid Havelange and his son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira unconscionable sums in bribes. About £1.6m was paid back, although neither were prosecuted. And here’s a little twist: in 1997, the Fifa general secretary, one Sepp Blatter, had a £1m payment for Havelange from ISL come across his desk. He did nothing. A Fifa ethics committee investigation report in 2013 called him “clumsy”. Others have called him far worse.
1983: Jack Warner joins Fifa ExCo
An ex-history teacher from Trinidad and Tobago, Warner raised schmoozing to a fine art. He is pictured with luminaries from David Beckham (more on him later) to Barack Obama, to, err Gordon Brown. He was head of Concacaf – crucially for Fifa, a confederation with 41 member countries, and therefore 41 votes – and he used his influence to great gain (mainly for himself), rising to become Sepp Blatter’s vice-president. In the early 2000s he was against, then for, then against England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup bid, playing one side off another. We know the outcome. He is on bail in his home country having been indicted for corruption in 2015.
1996: Chuck Blazer joins the party
Chuck Blazer, an extremely hirsute, morbidly obese American, was Warner’s right-hand man. He was a key player in the golden age of sporting corruption in the 1990s and personified the high-on-the-hog lifestyle enjoyed by the Fifa crooks. Turned whistleblower after the 2015 police raid on the Baur au Lac hotel.
8 June 1998: Sepp Blatter takes power
Blatter had learned under Havelange how Fifa worked. He had a globalist vision and was a dab-hand at currying favour with federations in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean (as they had far more votes than South America, Europe or Oceania). Has been accused of a lot. He has been convicted of none of it.
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2 December 2010: That World Cup vote
England had taken Prince William and David Beckham as schmooze-ballast to the vote in Singapore on who would host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. They didn’t matter a jot. Lord Triesman said later that no fewer than four committee members had asked him for money or other favours in exchange for votes. A leaked email from then Fifa general secretary Jerome Valcke said that Qatar had bought votes.
There was also evidence that Qatari money had funded football programmes in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America. Jack Warner was accused of asking for $2.5m in exchange for votes from his 41 member associations.
24 February 2015: Oh, it’s hot
Almost five years after awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, Fifa figured that 41 degrees Celsius was too hot to play football. So it shifted the tournament from June to November. Which was nice.
27 May 2015: Raid on Baur au Lac Hotel
Whatever the Swiss-German word for schadenfreude is, fans felt it when US federal prosecutors descended on a swanky Zurich hotel (£550 a night) and arrested seven Fifa officials. That number soon grew to 41. The charges were related to the alleged use of bribery, fraud and money laundering to fix marketing and media right deals. The US law enforcement agencies were involved because the companies involved were from there.
It led to Blatter’s removal from office, a Fifa investigation dismissed as “window dressing” by critics and a host of convictions, but not of Blatter. Whether it has changed the grubby methods of doing business that flourished since Havelange’s era remains to be seen.
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