Time For A Football Revolution? By James Marsters

It's been a while since I've been tempted to write a whingeing article and it was this week's announcement of the winning world cup bids for 2018 and 2022 which brought me out of hibernation.

Now, as an Englishman, you might scoff and claim that I am a disgruntled fan who is suffering from an acute bout of sour grapes but I'm being honest when I say that I didn't want England to win the bid in the first place. As a passionate Hull City fan, it was a kick in teeth to find that those powerhouses of third-tier football, Plymouth and Milton Keynes were awarded 'host city' status in the English bid, especially when Milton Keynes didn't even have a football team until they stole one from Wimbledon six years ago. It was even more insulting when my local Morrisons was asking for customers to sign up to 'back the bid'.

Needless to say, I walked past muttering mild profanities under my breath, my favourite course of action in these situations. But apart from this, the main reason that I didn't want England to win the bid was because we are far too arrogant as a nation when it comes to situations like this. You could tell that every member of the bid team was adamant that the England bid was the best and I suppose there is a chance that it was, but surely it would be much more English to be humble about it. So, to return to my original point, why am I so angry about the outcome of the bids?

It's all down to the fact that the two winning countries were the ones with the least footballing history but most disposable income. However, having said that, it's not the Russians winning that angers me the most. Russia is the biggest country in the world, has the seventh highest ranked league system in Europe (behind the big four, France and Portugal) and regularly has teams in contention for European titles. To be honest, I'm surprised they haven't hosted a world cup in the past, and if it wasn't for the rumours of so much money changing hands, I'd say they were worthy winners.

However, it's the awarding of the tournament to Qatar which brings the most bile to my throat. Here are the facts: Qatar is smaller than the Falkland Islands and has never appeared at the world cup finals. The national team is ranked 113th in the world by FIFA and will surely be the lowest-ranked nation to ever host the competition in eight years' time. The first Qatari football club was established only 60 years ago with what else but oil companies founding the first national competition. On top of Qatar's footballing pedigree, human liberty (or lack of) is another issue.

Women only received the vote in 1999 and for every person who points out that women are now legally allowed to drive (how forward-thinking), there are many more who point out that homosexuality is illegal and that the death penalty is still in force.

Much has been made in the press this week that the games for the 2022 World Cup will have to be played in air-conditioned stadiums. Temperatures in the summer in Qatar can exceed 40¡C but it is not just the players that will need respite from the blistering heat. What about the tens of thousands of fans converging on each game? Where will they escape the heat in the middle of summer between games?

The anticipated problems with the heat will only lead to speculation that FIFA may move the dates of the tournament to the northern hemisphere's winter. Now a person with only a passing interest in football may see this as the perfect solution, however, this would cause a significant problem to the vast majority of the world's major football leagues including those of England, Spain, Italy and Germany whose seasons run from August to May and I personally cannot see the likes of Chelsea and Real Madrid willing to lose potentially their entire first team for a month or more.

Judging by the rumours flying around about bribes and bungs, I would not be surprised if FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, announced the switch closer to the time with a sickening smile on his smug face and a wad of Qatari riyals spilling out of his pocket. You see, this is the real problem with football. It's not that FIFA want to expand the game to new areas. If that was the case (and it would be noble if it were), FIFA would bankroll the tournament in enthusiastically fanatic but poorer countries in South America or Africa, and they would surely not have taken away the opportunity for countries to present a joint bid (like that of Japan and South Korea in 2002) which had been disallowed at the time of the bids for this year's world cup in South Africa.

The real problem is that the whole world has to pander to the whims of a select band of 24 men and, in particular, the wishes of Sepp Blatter himself.

The very first football association was formed in 1863 in England. The laws of the game were drawn up by Ebenezer Cobb Morley, a man from Hull (a fact which should have been all the FA needed to select the KC Stadium as a host venue) and much was made of the desire for all involved to ensure that football was a game played by the people, watched by the people and run by the people. How far from that ideal we have come? We have been aware for some time that football as an industry is corrupt but this latest tabloid outrage will hopefully expose just how far this corruption reaches. Football has too much money; too few people have a disproportionate amount of power; and those in power are so detached from the people who fund their bank balances, the fans.

Whilst the rest of the world bemoans that the world's top footballers earn too much money, that ticket prices are too high and that referees will never make all of the right decisions without the assistance of technology, Sepp Blatter, a man whose own track record in business is questionable to say the least, sits in his ivory tower, counting his riches, knowing nothing of the game of football itself and looking down on the little people, wondering how they could ever be so unhappy watching rich people enjoy themselves. Never has there been a better reason for revolution within football. To replace Blatter with someone who had grown up within football would be one idea but there will never be a proper revolution as long as Blatter's cronies remain in FIFA.

Maybe the answer would be to form a new world governing body. If this happened, any team that defected would be immediately ineligible for FIFA tournaments, including the world cup and it may lead to a worldwide split into two camps, one of traditional footballing nations like England and France, and one of developing associations such as Russia and Qatar.

Whatever happens, it is clear that more people need a greater say in the running of the game. Whether that means having a representative from every member association on the board at FIFA in place of Blatter and his barons or having a pre-agreed, automated process for deciding world cup bids, I don't think that any regular football fan could deny that the game is in need of rapid change.

Personally, I would not be happy until Blatter is removed from his throne and replaced by real football people who live and breathe the game, until a salary cap is enforced in every nation for all football-related professions and until the rest of FIFA sees through Blatter's insistence that technology would remove the game from its roots and recognise this as a transparent ploy to make him seem in touch with those who pay his wages. I am a football fan but I've never been given the opportunity to register my dissatisfaction with the way the game is run. Maybe if FIFA was a democratic institution, we would all believe in it a little bit more. Football is the world's greatest game but as with all good things, it's being ruined by money. If only those of 1863 could see us now. What would Ebenezer Cobb Morley say?

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