Touring Doha on Friday, bowling along the sunny boulevards in air-conditioned comfort while far-off friends grumbled in my ear about London’s rain, it occurred that little more than a year from now we could be talking Qatar versus England for the right to host the 2022 World Cup.
What a contest: new against old, boundless wealth and innovation against creaking tradition, David against Goliath. And for whom, if I were on the Fifa executive committee (it was quite a reverie), would I vote? Easy. The ones who gave me the more valuable handbag, of course. But other questions coursed through the mind.
How much does England want the World Cup? I don’t mean the FA or Government; I mean the people, who are promised that the tournament would bring the economy an extra £3.2 billion, which we could, I suppose, put towards the infinitely greater sum required to cure our finances.
Naturally, England’s supporters want the World Cup, ideally in 2018, or if Australia or the United States were to beat all European contenders to the first of the two votes in December next year, 2022, the vote for which would pit England against Qatar and others.
England’s fans have spent too much on travelling not to wish for a well-earned break from pouring their money into other economies. Football enthusiasts generally want it because it would give them, and their children, an opportunity to share in and taste the atmosphere.
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The best guess about other English people is that they would happily host a World Cup if the price were right. And the Government convincingly judged their mood in deciding that, in the present circumstances, a £5 million grant to the FA for drinks, canap?s, handbags and the various other titbits for committee members would be regarded as tasteless.
That is certainly how I feel. If there is a sudden hole in the budget, it should be filled from within a game awash with money, not by taxpayers already squeezed by the failure of perhaps the only bit of society more adept at wasting prosperity, the financial system. People rightly resented the bonuses kept by bad bankers. They have no sympathy left for football.
This is part of the game’s problem: it has such difficulty in getting real. It prefers to squabble and blame than work together, and coming here to see the benefits of a unitary system of power — I’m not saying it lacks flaws, but seeing stadiums, hotels and sports centres sprout out of the desert doesn’t half make our way seem ponderous — helps to explain how dimly the FA and others are still viewed.
Lord Triesman, it must be said, has made a bad situation worse. I thought he made a bright start as the FA’s first “independent” chairman and still disagree with those who castigate him for having boldly taken Michel Platini’s anti-debt line at a conference attended by Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League. One, the League should have taken a telling. Then Scudamore introduced rules preventing clubs from falling dangerously into debt. So this was another storm in a teacup.
For several years the big political football has been the National Football Centre project in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire. Originally it would have cost less than £25 million but, as the arguments have proceeded, at least that much has been spent on maintenance.
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Qatar, with an indigenous population of 250,000 (and about 1.6 million immigrants), has a national football centre. It is integrated into a national sports centre, the Aspire Academy, that takes your breath away. Everything is so generously proportioned, like Doha’s better hotels, that you feel like Tom Thumb. There is such attention to detail — for 200 residential scholars, the vast games room features six full-size snooker tables, six for table football and two for table tennis.
Stadiums of various sizes, indoor and open-air, house all games. Practice pitches stretch in all directions. Several are open to the public, free of charge, for this is the hub not just of an excellence programme, but for a public health campaign, strongly backed by Sheikh Jassim, the Emir’s son, and his father’s second wife, Sheikha Mozah, who has become more than a symbol of women’s rights in a country eager to advance its reputation for enlightenment.
Meanwhile, Triesman surely rues taking responsibility for the bid as well as the FA, where he had enough on his plate — the failing Respect campaign is one example, Burton another — without putting himself forward for a task that always demanded a more resonant figure or a pair of them (Gary Lineker, say, with David Dein, the former Arsenal vice-chairman).
In Doha, it is easy. Sheikh Mohammed, another son of the Emir and young enough to bear a disconcerting resemblance to Cesc Fàbregas, hears from specialists what is needed and, backed by almost limitless reserves of natural gas, orders it.
If I were a Fifa committee member, the comparison would weigh heavily.