IOC President Jacques Rogge proclaimed this week that the United Kingdom, and possibly London, can bid to host another Olympics perhaps even as early as 2032 due to the widely acknowledged success of this summer’s event. What made it successful is up for debate and statements from members of sports organisations must be treated with scepticism, but for the President to say this would seem to indicate that the Games, at least in part, met the required standards. But when it came to hosting the World Cup in 2018, FIFA felt that England was not in the best position to take that responsibility.
The general opinion seems to be that based on infrastructure, England would have been able to host the tournament. It was even thought so by FIFA who scored England very highly in its technical report, which analysed a number of facets of the bid such as the IT network, the security, the facilities and distances between venues amongst others. England’s bid received 14 low risk scores out of a possible 16, with none going above medium. The bid evaluation report also recognised the previous experience England had of hosting international sporting events, such as Euro 96 and the 2002 Commonwealth Games.
FIFA is an international federation as recognised by the IOC, and it is the latter that declare supreme authority over international federations and therefore sport. Whether this is true is questionable, as FIFA recently showed over the Team GB football squad saga for the 2012 Olympics, whereby it was they who showed sovereignty by allowing the home nations to join in a one-off spectacle against usual football protocol. But based on the assumed hierarchy of international sports governance it would only seem reasonable that FIFA would recognise that the country can hold a major event, because the IOC had already entrusted them with that task.
So why was the England bid not good enough? There are a number of possibilities,but when it comes down to it only those that made the decision will know. It could be argued that the Olympics was based mainly in one city, with certain events taking place elsewhere, but the World Cup would be across a nation, and facilities would have to meet the same standards throughout whilst having good links between all venues. Considering some previous World Cups and things like travelling distances, England would have been able to do this. Also, this possible negative against a nationwide tournament could be turned into a positive because it shows that if one event with numerous different sporting competitions taking place can be done in one city, it can be done in the rest of the country.
A further point of contention about this, is that England only received two of the 22 Executive Committee votes, one of which was from the FA chairman Geoff Thompson. This saw elimination in the first round of voting. For such a strong evaluation this was difficult to take for the England bid team.
After failing to win the vote for the 2006 World Cup, the UK government undertook a report on staging international sporting events. As part of their conclusion on England’s bid, they noted that there were also extraneous factors and the politics of international sport to consider when bidding to host an event. The bid team must question themselves to see if they had taken on the recommendations previously outlined. Perhaps other factors were not as attainable in England’s bid, perhaps since the reports there had been a marked improvement in rival bids.
What is critical to point out is that England’s bid was not perfect and it cannot just be assumed that England lost the vote. To do so would suggest that they had no competition, which is certainly not true, and shows a self-proclaimed arrogance that it could understandably be argued has existed in England when it comes to the international stage with little substantiation. But Rogge’s comments this week do make you wonder why the UK can hold another Olympics but not a World Cup.
Daniel Smith @dmsmith1987
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