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Why England’s 2018 World Cup Bid should be judged on merit and not on misjudgement

Business | Sport

By Chris Hughes

The World Cup is fast approaching but it is the 2018 event that has generated most column inches over the last seven days, particularly on British shores. England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup has taken quite a knock in the few days since David Beckham formally handed over the monster 1,752 page bid to FIFA President Sepp Blatter last week.

Newspaper The Mail on Sunday’s decision to run an entrapment story in which now former FA chairman Lord Triesman’s is said to have made inappropriate suggestions about the behaviour of rival bid countries has led to a widespread backlash from the British public.

The highest profile attack on the Mail’s decision to run the story has come from former World Cup hero Gary Lineker who has very publicly stepped down from his column in the same publication.

“The story itself, the circumstances surrounding it and the actions of the Mail on Sunday in publishing it have undermined the bid to bring the World Cup to England in 2018,” he said in a statement. "I wholeheartedly support the bid, because I believe that hosting the tournament would be brilliant for the country, and I am an official ambassador for it. I have therefore taken the view that I cannot continue as a columnist for the Mail on Sunday."

A bold statement but one which reflects the sentiment of all English football fans, many of whom are avid Mail readers. How could the Mail on Sunday have made such a miscalculation, such poor judgement?

There are few things more powerful than the World Cup to unite a nation. There are few people in England who do not relish the day that they can either revisit the joy of 1966 or, for most, to experience it first-hand for the first time. Even the most casual of observers senses the anticipation and importance of the World Cup and the swell of support for this 2018 bid is a testament to how passionately the country wants to stage the event.

By running a story of this ‘kiss and tell’ nature, the Mail cannot take any journalistic moral high ground and has left itself exposed to the backlash that has ensued. While the story has seemingly rocked the foundations of England’s 2018 World Cup, one of the bid’s board members, Lord Coe, believes that there is little to worry about.

"I don't think anybody in the world, including Fifa, doubts we have anything other than a great ability to deliver a fantastic World Cup," he told the BBC. "This does not become a bad bid overnight.

I understand campaigns. We were bidding to stage an Olympic Games for the best part of three years. Campaigns are marathons, not sprints. There's rarely anything that is so serious or so great that you are permanently derailed or you jump across the line in one fell swoop. You have to be consistent with your messages. What is the consistent message that we will be punching between now until the vote in Zurich? - that we have stadiums in place that are extraordinary, we have passionate fans, we have a marketplace for football. We will go on punching that message."

With Lord Triesman resigning from his post and some deft work on the part of the bid team to minimise the damage caused, perhaps Lord Coe’s optimism is well placed, only time will tell. The fact remains that the plans outlined in England’s 2018 World Cup bid should be assessed on their own merit and not on the words of one man during what should have remained a private conversation.

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