The FFA’s New Man of Mystery

After the latest controversy involving expensive outside consultants for our World Cup Bid, I figured there couldn’t possibly be more. Yet Buckley and Lowy seem to come up with ways to keep us all busy trying to figure out just what they think they are doing. Enter Fedor Radmann, a former Vice President of Germany 2006’s organizing committee and the newest controversial hire for the FFA in its bid to bring the World Cup finals to Australia. Andrew Jennings at Transparency in Sport has the story:

http://www.transparencyinsport.org/Billionaire_Lowy_hires_another_Bagman/billionaire_lowy_hires_another_bagman%28page1%29.html

Among the most damning accusations is that Radmann – with Sepp Blatter’s assistance – forced Charlie Dempsey, a member of the FIFA executive committee, to abstain during the voting over the rights to host the 2006 World Cup, essentially assuring that Germany, and not South Africa, received the rights to host the finals. Following Dempsey’s immediate resignation, Jennings reveals a controversial minutes document from a private FIFA meeting:

“The FIFA President expressed regret that the outcry in the wake of the election had forced Charles Dempsey to hand in his resignation from the FIFA Executive Committee and the OFC Presidency and that he had answered Charles Dempsey’s letter of resignation on 15 July by assuring him that the Executive Committee would in due course seek a way to recompense him for his long and loyal services to FIFA.”

Lastly, here’s a good summary of why Australian football fans should be concerned:

“Australian taxpayers – and their Government which channels their money to Andreas Abold, Fedor Radmann and of course the Swiss-Hungarian conman Peter Hargitay - should wonder if they are getting value for money. There’s no doubt that Abold employs a talented team of graphic designers and his bid book will be up to standard.

The other two hustlers? Who on earth was ever influenced by Peter Hargitay apart from the Swiss businessman who loaned him US$2 million and has been chasing him for years to get it back. Hargitay performed a few dark things for FIFA president Sepp Blatter and then was shown the door. After being kicked out by the English FA he won’t be expecting to swing FIFA vice-president Geoff Thompson’s vote behind Lowy. And now Bin Hammam’s people, gearing up for war with Blatter, have told Hargitay not to bother them again. Jack Warner knows what he wants and intends to get it. Better leave that twisting in the twilight.”

The FFA’s New Man of Mystery

After the latest controversy involving expensive outside consultants for our World Cup Bid, I figured there couldn’t possibly be more. Yet Buckley and Lowy seem to come up with ways to keep us all busy trying to figure out just what they think they are doing. Enter Fedor Radmann, a former Vice President of Germany 2006’s organizing committee and the newest controversial hire for the FFA in its bid to bring the World Cup finals to Australia. Andrew Jennings at Transparency in Sport has the story.

Among the most damning accusations is that Radmann – with Sepp Blatter’s assistance – forced Charlie Dempsey, a member of the FIFA executive committee, to abstain during the voting over the rights to host the 2006 World Cup, essentially assuring that Germany, and not South Africa, received the rights to host the finals. Following Dempsey’s immediate resignation, Jennings reveals a controversial minutes document from a private FIFA meeting:

“The FIFA President expressed regret that the outcry in the wake of the election had forced Charles Dempsey to hand in his resignation from the FIFA Executive Committee and the OFC Presidency and that he had answered Charles Dempsey’s letter of resignation on 15 July by assuring him that the Executive Committee would in due course seek a way to recompense him for his long and loyal services to FIFA.”

Lastly, here’s a good summary of why Australian football fans should be concerned:

“Australian taxpayers – and their Government which channels their money to Andreas Abold, Fedor Radmann and of course the Swiss-Hungarian conman Peter Hargitay - should wonder if they are getting value for money. There’s no doubt that Abold employs a talented team of graphic designers and his bid book will be up to standard.

The other two hustlers? Who on earth was ever influenced by Peter Hargitay apart from the Swiss businessman who loaned him US$2 million and has been chasing him for years to get it back. Hargitay performed a few dark things for FIFA president Sepp Blatter and then was shown the door. After being kicked out by the English FA he won’t be expecting to swing FIFA vice-president Geoff Thompson’s vote behind Lowy. And now Bin Hammam’s people, gearing up for war with Blatter, have told Hargitay not to bother them again. Jack Warner knows what he wants and intends to get it. Better leave that twisting in the twilight.”

Buckley returns from Angola’s CAF conference empty-handed?

FFA chief Ben Buckley’s blitzkrieg appearance in Angola last week might be seen as a terrific success, given that there were rumours that the FFA would boycott the conference following the revelation that Qatar had secured an exclusive sponsorship agreement with CAF for its 29 January conference. As I wrote at the time, it likely was not the best idea for Australia to criticize African football’s top officials when it needed their four votes to win the World Cup, but it seems that the bid’s leadership lacks common sense sometimes.

Fortunately they came to their senses and attended – now what was the result? The World Game sheds light on that very question today:

The success of Australia's strategy to lure precious World Cup bid votes from Africa remains unknown after Football Federation Australia chief executive Ben Buckley returned from a lightning visit to Angola a week ago. Buckley's trip highlighted the often thankless but complex political roadmap Australia has to navigate if its World Cup bid is to be successful later this year…

Russia had perhaps the most high-profile presence of bidders, with a team of advisers headed by former FIFA communications boss Markus Siegler and long-time ex-FIFA executive committee member Viacheslav Koloskov.

Underlining the close-knit network with roles in deciding future World Cup hosts, Siegler had previously worked with Peter Hargitay, who is now advising Australia's bid.

Australia's bid has so far rated well in terms of government and public support and legacy, according to a report by World Football Insider, a website specialising in football industry analysis.

But according to the report, Australia still lacks influence in relations with FIFA.

It’s this last part that gets me. How can the bid “lack influence in relations with FIFA”? Last time I checked, we did not hire Peter Hargitay and other expensive outside consultants because they were upstanding gentlemen – we hired them because of their influence and connections in FIFA. So not only is taxpayer money funding the salary of an alleged cocaine trafficker, but we are funding the salary of someone who doesn’t appear to be helping the bid at all. Ambivalence and a marginal level of influence in FIFA certainly are not worth several million dollars.

A quick note on the Harkes affair

Developments in the past few days have shed some long-awaited light on why the American team were knocked out in the first round of their 1998 World Cup campaign. It turns out their mediocre performance wasn't so much to do with shortcomings on-field: in a recent interview more than a decade after the fact, it has been revealed the then US captain John Harkes was dropped from the team two months before the Cup for having an affair with the wife of a teammate. For it to have happened in the first place, and then for it to have taken so long to come out given the impact it obviously had, one has to question what this says about the American football program in general...

http://usasoccerworldcup.blogspot.com/2010/02/affair-doomed-1998-us-world-cup-team.html

Is our bid in full-on crisis mode?

The past week has certainly not been a good one for Australia’s chances to host Football’s crown jewel. Let’s do a quick rundown of some of the recent developments and what they might mean for the FFA’s chances.

1) FIFA Chief Sepp Blatter announced that there was a “movement” to host the World Cup in Europe in 2018. Essentially, this was Blatter announcing what everybody all along had already assumed – that the moneyed interests in FIFA and UEFA would not tolerate three consecutive World Cup finals away from European soil – but the FIFA President managed to infuriate bidding members and fans on several continents, something he has proved splendidly adept at during his tenure. He has since backed away from these comments, and has emphasized that everyone is still allowed to bid, but if you still think Australia has a shot at 2018, I invite you to visit the nearest mental hospital.

2) With this bomb fully detonated, journalists, bloggers and anyone else with half a brain began wondering the obvious – how in the world did this happen?

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/sport/cup-flop-turns-heat-on-ffas-man/story-e6frg7mf-1225824141009

As Ray Gatt points out here, the lack of foresight on the part of Australia’s bid committee calls into question just how effective their hiring of Peter Hargitay – the supposed FIFA insider with an impressive list of forays into criminal activity. He is, according to some reports, being paid $4 million out of the $45 million taxpayer-funded budget for the World Cup bid. For that price, would it be too much to ask for him to do his job?

3) The resignation of Bonita Mersiades was certainly a big blow as well. Mersiades was hand-picked to run corporate and public affairs for Australia’s bid, and has had close personal relationships with nearly everyone of significance in the FFA. In other words, she was the real deal.

So what happened? Why the mysterious departure? Naturally FFA wouldn’t say anything, only recycling the usual PR-firm jargon that the bid remains on track, they are confident with their staff, Australia will host a great finals, etc. But Jesse Fink from The World Game, who knew Mersiades personally, seems to call FFA’s official line into question:

http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/blogs/halftimeorange/was-mersiades-boned-282347

“But I got the impression she was unhappy about the situation. If you know Bonnie, and I do, you know she lives and breathes football. This was her dream gig.

Socceroos legend and FFA board member Jack Reilly was flabbergasted by her departure, telling me that from what he had seen, she enjoyed the “full confidence” of the “the chairman and chief executive” and had previously been “supported to the hilt”.

It beggars belief that Ben Buckley now insists her leaving the organisation will have no effect on Australia's World Cup bid, because Mersiades herself drafted a lot of the strategy documents used for the campaign, and even wrote the script Nicole Kidman read out in the bid’s promotional film.”

There is certainly quite a bit of time left for the FFA to get the bid back on track, but the last few weeks have been nothing short of embarrassing for Australian football fans. Davidde Coran from The Roar sums up the general mood fairly nicely:

“Less then two months ago, Australia was as real of a World Cup hosting candidate as any of the others. But is that still the case? The free ride is over, the Australian bid has begun to flail, and it’s time to starting asking questions.”

http://www.theroar.com.au/2010/01/28/time-to-get-serious-about-our-floundering-world-cup-bid/

Trouble Brewing for Indonesia 2018 Bid

Things have certainly been interesting lately in Indonesian football, haven’t they? First there was the defeat to Oman last week, knocking them out of the Asian Cup. Then there was the disgruntled fan who decided that if his team could not find the net for the equalizer, he might as well run onto the pitch and give it a go himself (The Omani keeper was apparently as adept at stopping the Indonesian fans as he was at stopping its national team).

Now the Indonesian World Cup bid chief, Nurdin Halid, who has been facing repeated calls for his resignation, faces an even more difficult challenge. The Indonesian government may not get behind the bid at all!

In December, the Indonesian Football Federation said that a lack of support from the government would cause them to withdraw their bid. At present, it would be hard to blame government officials, many of whom have long questioned the wisdom of devoting the required funds to hosting the World Cup, given the poor state of Football in their own country. Whether Halid resigns as bid chief is difficult to predict, but it will take a lot more than a leadership change to save the runaway train that is Indonesia’s World Cup bid.

Why the Big 2018-2022 World Cup Bid Nations Can Kiss Africa Goodbye

I’ve been following the ballyhoo over Confederation of African Football’s sponsorship deal with Qatar, the tiny Arab state that wants to host the 2022 World Cup. At first look, I thought “much ado about nothing”. Qatar certainly negotiated a brilliant deal that gives them exclusive, free reign to showcase its 2022 bid at the 29 January CAF Congress in Angola. But FIFA has already ruled that the agreement is legal and no one has actually submitted a formal complaint about it. The Brits have even said they are “relaxed” about the deal. So why the gallons of ink spilled over the matter?

A deeper look tells me that it’s not Qatar that the two, big country critics have a problem with. Qatar made a great deal in a legal negotiation. No, it’s CAF that the critics are targeting. But it’s a classic case of projecting ones failures onto others. And not thinking up an exclusive sponsorship agreement with CAF is, at the end of the day, a strategic failure.

I can’t help but think that there is even more going on here. There’s a whiff of colonial entitlement in the outrage being expressed by the big country critics of the African-Qatar deal. What’s implicit in their complaints of the deal is that CAF is somehow unprofessional, or worse, unable to manage its own affairs…at least to the satisfaction of rich, big bidding nations.

In the end, questioning the judgment of CAF won’t prove to be a good strategy for anyone hoping to appeal to crucial African FIFA voters (there are four) for the 2018-2022 World Cup. Africa, which is about to host the 2010 World Cup, deserves respect as a force for football’s future. Now, especially in the wake of the horrifying attacks on the Togolese team in Angola this week, all of African football deserves our support. The attacks on CAF’s professionalism and capability demonstrate neither.