As a result, every English speaking nation must be forced to dodgy refereeing decisions to the point where it costs them any chance of ever winning anything. If you don't believe me, let's just quickly have a review of this year's World Cup in South Africa:
- England's disallowed goal against Germany, when ALL the ball had crossed the line.
- Australia having Cahill sent off against Germany, and thus losing their only striker.
- Italy being awarded a penalty against New Zealand (when it wasn't even inside the area)
- Referee Koman Coulibaly disallowing a USA goal against Slovenia for no apparent reason at all.
- Ghana scoring against the USA in the 94th minute when there were only supposed to be 2 minutes of added time.
- Ireland being knocked out of the qualifiers against France when Thierry Henry handballed a goal.
Every English speaking nation at the 2010 tournament at critical moments was forced to suffer bad refereeing decisions. I assume that this must be some sort of unwritten FIFA policy. If there was only one or two it might be seen as unfortunate, but against all of them? Come on.
Of course there is a fairly obvious reason why FIFA would hold such a resentment. The International Football Association Board or IFAB which determines the Laws of the Game, is made up of 8 members. Four being representatives of each of the home nations (namely England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales), and four members from FIFA.
http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/fifafacts/organisation/ip-100_04e_ifab_9481.pdf
It seems to me that because FIFA don't happen to control some aspect of the game (much like their resentment towards UEFA for having a shiny, glossy European Champions League that's worth so much money) then they feel the need to retaliate.
Now if you apply this to the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, then the results which we have seen this morning should have been fairly predictable.
On paper, the best bids should have been England and the USA. There is a minimum requirement that the host nation has 12 stadiums that can hold at least 40,000 people. England being the home of football not surprisingly has 56, and the USA which hosts American Football at both national and college level has more than 200. Russia currently has 3 and Qatar which has a total population of less than half of Sydney, only has 1 at the moment.
The fact that the 2018 and 2022 World Cups went to two nations whose bids are backed by oil money, and given that only last week there were allegations of bribery by the BBC's Panorama program, doesn't really do much to dissuade my suspicions that FIFA really are a bunch of corrupt bastards. It also makes a mockery of the banner that FIFA bring out before most international matches. It is perfectly alright for them to have a "Say No To Racism" because discrimination on the grounds of the language you speak isn't actually racism.
Actually the best thing that the USA, England and Australia could have done in their campaigns would have been to just give up before they started because they were never going to win. That truly would have been the best thing according to FIFA's own motto "For The Good Of The Game".
The final results of this morning are: Corruption and Bribery 2 - Football 0.
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