Blame FIFA, not the BBC

By Darrell Goodliffe

I rather suspect I am not the only person who is hugely disappointed that the 2018 World Cup will be held in Russia and not England. It was inevitable that recriminations would be begin almost as the result was announced – especially as the verdict against England was so crushing. Ivan Lewis, for Labour, called for an inquiry into how football is run in England. However he misses the point; although there maybe issues to be addressed there, the real problem is not just how the game is run nationally but also internationally.

Both the BBC on its Panorama program and the Sunday Times have recently put forward serious allegations about potential corruption within FIFA. Some comrades have blamed this for the result. Whatever you might think of the BBC and the Times, I disagree with scapegoating them in this way. It is totally wrong in principle to call on the media to be told it must dictate its agenda due to a vested interest we have as a country. If we go down that road then logically we would end up supporting censorship and protecting the powerful from all scrutiny. If the price of having the World Cup would be that then I, for one, would never want the World Cup to be hosted in this country again.

The media is being used as a convenient scapegoat to avoid talking about the real problem that afflicts FIFA and football which is the culture of putting money before everything else. FIFA’s prime motivation in giving the World Cup to Russia and Qatar is transparently to increase revenue and this shows that there is a wider problem. The monetary interest in ‘expanding footballs frontiers’ was always likely to triumph, Panorama or no Panorama. When the leadership of the game puts money first; then it is little surprise that national associations and clubs follow suit.

This problem hasn’t just led to the latest debacle (and serious and legitimate questions on various levels exist about the choice of both venues, especially Qatar which was considered even by FIFA’s own inspectors to be ‘high risk’). It also led to the scandalous treatment of the Republic of Ireland in the run-up to the last World Cup when it was refused a reply despite a clear admission from a French player that they cheated. When it comes to spending money to improve the game, with the introduction of goal-line technology for example, FIFA’s frugality and penny-pinching is masked behind pious noises about ‘preserving the character of the game’.

Seeing football as a cash-cow – rather than the dynamic economic and cultural thing that it is – is just the tip of a particularly large iceberg. So, while an inquiry into how football is run in the UK might solve some issues and highlight some areas for improvement it will not tackle the main issue which is the drive to accumulate money, even if that comes at the expense of the game.