FIFA: New Frontiers or Same Old Story?

(PIC: Stephen McCaskill)

The day had started with a genuine sense of optimism within the England camp. The bid team felt that they had weathered the storm resulting from the BBC’s Panorama investigation into corruption within FIFA and after a perfect presentation fronted by David Beckham, David Cameron and Prince William, spirits were high. However by the time the FIFA Executive Committee had exited their conclave, news was filtering through on twitter and media outlets that England had been eliminated from the first round of voting. After FIFA’s trademark pomp and ceremony delayed the announcement, we were finally put out of our misery as Sepp Blatter announced that Russia and Qatar had won the race to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups respectively. While there are genuine reasons for selecting Russia as hosts, the selection of Qatar and the bidding process itself have highlighted fundamental problems within FIFA.

Russia has never hosted the World Cup before and the tournament offers the country a chance to improve the nation’s infrastructure and repair its image tarnished by decades of communist rule. A genuine legacy is possible in the world’s biggest country, something that was arguably not as true of the three other competing bids, Despite the desire of FIFA to bring the World Cup to new countries, many have questioned the wisdom of awarding the World Cup to the two countries ranked worst in FIFA’s technical report. England, who were ranked the highest in the same report, did not have a divine right to host the competition but for the bid to finish behind the rank outsiders Netherlands & Belgium in last place is nothing short of astonishing. For two years, the bid team had been campaigning around the world in an attempt to secure the votes of the members of the Executive Committee. The bid cost £15m and its return yielded just two votes, one of which is expected to be England’s sole member on the committee, Geoff Thompson. Following FIFA’s decision, many were quick to point to the effects of the Sunday Times investigation that revealed two members offered their votes for cash and of the BBC Panorama programme that aired allegations of corruption by another three members. The timing of the broadcast of Panorama was criticised by those who felt that showing it just three days before the vote would sabotage England’s bid.  FIFA did not welcome the intrusions and although they suspended Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii after the Sunday Times investigation, they made it clear that they were not grateful for the exposure of the corruption. The BBC’s Panorama programme largely consisted of old material and although it was not the most enthralling pieces of investigative journalism, the British media should not be forced to censor itself. FIFA stated that they are against any breach of their code of ethics, but rather than attempt to clean up their organisation, FIFA felt that it was necessary to hold this against the England bid. 

Qatar’s selection as host for the 2022 World Cup is difficult to justify. The Emirate has a population of just over 1.6 million people, summer temperatures of anything between 40 to 50 degrees and six of its proposed stadia are in the capital, Doha. These are genuine practical problems that must be considered, and the heat was noted by the FIFA technical report as a possible risk to spectators and competitors’ health. Qatar’s solution for the heat is to regulate the climate of the stadia to a more manageable temperature but problems such as the country’s human rights record will be more difficult to overcome. The case for giving Qatar the world cup rests almost solely on the basis that they have never hosted it before, but Australia, a country with a growing appetite for football that has never hosted the World Cup either, were eliminated in the first round of voting after receiving just one vote. Qatar does have some experience in hosting major sporting events as Doha successfully hosted the 2006 Asian Games and the country will host the 2011 Asian Cup in January. However both of these tournaments take place in the winter, when the heat will be far more bearable than June and July.

FIFA’s lack of transparency and reform has left it open to accusations of corruption and greed while some decisions appear to be improvised and at the whim of Sepp Blatter. Allegations have been raised intermittently of members of the executive committee, yet FIFA has done nothing about them. The whole bidding process is designed for its members to gain favours from countries who daren’t offend them for risk of losing the chance to host the World Cup. Jack Warner was courted by the English bid and he managed to have England play a friendly in Trinidad in 2008 and David Beckham open a soccer school in the Caribbean country as the bid team massaged his immeasurable ego only for him not to give them his support. Governments were required to agree to a set of FIFA demands that promised them to waive visa regulations, strengthen laws that protected FIFA’s commercial partners and to gift FIFA tax exemptions. The governments were instructed not to publish these extortionate demands but when the Dutch government objected to them and did so, it damaged the Netherlands’ joint bid with Belgium. The bidding process itself is secretive and the room where the Executive Committee made their decision looked like something that a James Bond villain would have designed for his secret lair. The vote was only given a degree of transparency when in the dying moments of the campaign FIFA revealed that they would make the detailed results public.

Until the structure of FIFA and its host selection process is overhauled and made more transparent then allegations of corruption will persist. The IOC has managed to reform itself and would provide an ideal model for FIFA. Following the Salt Lake City scandal, members of the IOC are forbidden from having private meetings with bidding candidates while members are not permitted to vote if their country is a candidate. Executive Committee members had long decided who they would vote for and offered empty promises of their support to rival bidders. England’s bid was rated the best by the technical report and on profitability, yet lost to the country that rated the worst. The same was true in the bid for the 2022 World Cup where the United States and Australia were thwarted by Qatar whose bid was the worst technically and deemed ‘high risk’. If England’s bid was indeed derailed by the efforts of our free press then perhaps the World Cup is a price worth paying for bringing these allegations to light and for not jumping when FIFA clap.

The astroturf is always greener on the other side

Following last months takeover at Maidstone United, plans for the club’s long awaited return to the county town have gathered speed, with the new £1m stadium at James Whatman Way earmarked to open in time for Christmas 2011. New owners Oliver Ash and Terry Casey are adamant that any return to Maidstone is dependent on a new state of the art 3G artificial pitch being installed at the new ground. Ash claims that such a surface is the only way that the new stadium could fulfil its role as a facility for all of the club’s teams as it could be used seven days a week, something that would not be possible on a traditional pitch. The 3G artificial pitches proposed by Maidstone United, and those used by a number of clubs across Europe, are vastly different to the ‘plastic’ pitches used by QPR and Luton Town in the 1980s that were so maligned, but scepticism of synthetic turf remains widespread within football. Clubs and supporters have long rejected the idea that football could be played on anything but natural grass, but has the technology advanced enough for critics to reassess their view and recognise the benefits of artificial pitches?

In 1981, Queens Park Rangers believed that they were changing football for the better when they installed an artificial pitch at Loftus Road and three other clubs, Oldham Athletic, Preston North End and Luton Town followed their lead. The pitches however, were hated by opposition players and managers who believed that they were unsafe and gave the home team an unfair advantage as they were used to the oddities of the surface. Jim Smith, the QPR manager between 1985 and 1988, acknowledged as much when he recalled his memories of the pitch, "It was a false game, I knew exactly when we were going to score. It was like robots playing. You got carpet burns and very bad backs if you played on them long enough. The likes of ourselves who played on it regularly had a big advantage”. The pitches were banned in 1988 and the hostilities towards them have been sustained since then.

The advantages that those ‘pioneering’ clubs saw in artificial pitches are still recognised today and FIFA has been active in researching and testing the new generation of synthetic surfaces. In 2001, they launched a licensing programme for artificial pitches and in 2004 they ruled that any FIFA approved pitch could be used for competition. This programme, entitled the FIFA Quality Concept, tests pitches for durability, joint strength, climatic resistance, player-to-surface interaction and ball-to-surface interaction. Tests are also carried out to see if the pitch causes any irritations to the players, such as the carpet burns that affected those who played on the pitches in the 1980s. Pitches that pass these tests are awarded a one or two star recommendation; the first is mainly for community and municipal pitches while the second is awarded to pitches that are suitable for professional football.

The benefits of these pitches are clear; lower maintenance costs, a longer lifespan and an increased resistance to adverse weather conditions. This may appeal to chairmen, but fans, players and managers remain hostile, believing that despite the improvements, teams that play on artificial pitches still hold a crucial advantage. The first competitive international on artificial turf in Europe was the Euro 2008 qualifier between Russia and England and the Luzhniki stadium. The pitch was manufactured by Fieldturf, a company whose surfaces David Beckham criticised after playing on one when he joined Los Angeles Galaxy. Before the game, many were alarmed at the possibility of England not playing on grass, believing it definitely gave the home team an advantage. It was also suggested that the watering of the pitch increased the England players’ unfamiliarity with the pitch and contributed to the 2-1 defeat.

As in Russia, the Swiss winter can be cold and the weather damaging to pitches and as such, some Swiss Super League Clubs have installed artificial surfaces in order to reap the benefits that their advocates stress.  Young Boys Bern and Neuchatel Xamax are two of the Super League clubs who have done this when they reconstructed their grounds. YB’s pitch at the Stade de Suisse (sadly no longer the Wankdorf) came under particular scrutiny after their Champions League qualifier with Tottenham earlier this season. Manager Harry Redknapp had just watched his team come back from 3-0 down to salvage a respectable 3-2 first leg defeat and declared "I played on Astroturf myself and hated every minute of it. We don't have it in England anymore and I don't think it should be used in a competition like this”. UEFA rejected these claims, arguing that a thorough pitch inspection had taken place and that UEFA regulations permitted the use of FIFA 2 star rated artificial pitches at all levels of European competition except for the Champions League final. Supporters are also against artificial pitches as demonstrated when FC Luzern, another Swiss Super League side, announced that they were going to install an artificial pitch at their brand new swissporarena. Fans were outraged, believing that grass was to be the new victim of modern football, following in the steps of standing areas although, fortunately for the fans of FCL, the decision was reversed a few months later.

Football is notoriously resistant to change and in the current era of corporate boxes, all-seater stadia and high ticket prices perhaps many fans believe that artificial pitches are one step too far. At the highest level, grass should always remain the first option as clubs have the resources to relay the pitch and have other facilities that the community could use. However, at lower league and non league level this is not always the case and therefore artificial pitches are an attractive option. In the winter of 2009, Maidstone United did not have a home game in six weeks, something that caused extreme financial pressure on the club and could be prevented again if the plans for the 3G pitch go ahead. The community aspect of the stadium has been integral to the plans for the new ground and if it is necessary to have an artificial surface, then I’m sure that the fans would rather have it than not return in Maidstone. The jury is still out on artificial pitches, but research should be received with an open mind rather than a Luddite refusal to hear any argument in their favour. Grass will always be the ideal situation but not even that guarantees a perfect surface as the problems with Wembley have proved.