The Men who Sold the World Cup
A new film recounts the last days of Sepp Blatter and the bidding wars for the FIFA 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
"We played the rules of FIFA" said a member of Qatar's organising committee rather aptly, according to a new documentary on Discovery, "The Men Who Sold the World Cup."
Eleven years ago, football's governing body chose to send the 2022 tournament to a little nation with negligible soccer heritage and searing temperatures, rejecting four rival bids, all of whom were technically superior according to FIFA's own assessments.
This choice will be talked about for years to come and the Qatar question will reach a crescendo in a matter of months when a World Cup in the desert becomes a reality.
But the general judgement of the football world remains at best a sceptical one, not least because it means staging the traditional summer showdown in winter in the middle of a domestic season.
The 2010 FIFA congress which picked Russia and Qatar as World Cup hosts was for many fans the nadir of big money's takeover of football, an inevitable narrative which began when Joao Havelange became FIFA President in 1974.
Financial Potential
The 1966 tournament had been the first to be broadcast to a large audience worldwide and attracted impressive viewing figures in countries without strong soccer heritages. This confirmation of the game's global popularity on the small screen alerted entrepreneurs like Havelange to its untapped financial potential.
Once he had ousted the sitting president Stanley Rous after an aggressive campaign, Havelange ushered in a new modus operandi at football's governing body, employing questionable ethics which were continued by his successor Sepp Blatter.
FIFA metamorphosed, shifting its emphasis from football to profit and from sports administration to sports marketing.
With this culture well established in Zurich, it was therefore no surprise that the 2018 and 2022 tournaments ended up where they did. Yet so many football watchers were still shocked, as if their faith in the intrinsic decency of the sport was so strong they could not admit the money men had well and truly taken over.
Many eyebrows were raised when Russia pipped England, Spain & Portugal, Belgium & the Netherlands to the 2018 hosting but nobody should have been surprised given the Kremlin's geopolitical clout and skill at dodging the rules.
Qatar
Yet that naivety was nothing compared to the shock felt across the world at the news that little Qatar had beaten the USA, Japan, South Korea and Australia for 2022.
Unlike Qatar, Russia had footballing heritage on its side, but the overtone of a bid from the world's biggest country and a major military power was too great to ignore.
Qatar also brought geopolitics to bear as a Western-friendly Gulf State, but won with its wallet first and foremost, its only moral claim being the fact that the World Cup had never visited the Middle East before.
Modern realities had triumphed but the 2018/2022 voting was nevertheless widely deemed a double mistake riddled with corruption, par for the course for FIFA.
But this time too many big feathers had been ruffled in the process, which in hindsight signalled the end of an era.
The humiliation of the English and American delegations, which included Prince William, President Bill Clinton and the UK Prime Minister David Cameron, sowed the seeds for the downfall of Blatter and his bent lieutenants like the Argentine Julio Grondona, Paraguayan Nicolas Leoz and the 'pirate of the Caribbean', Trinidad's Jack Warner.
After keeping his uniform apparently clean despite sailing the seven sewers for 17 years, the Swiss skipper was finally holed in 2015 by a trident of British investigative journalism, American law-enforcers and, better late than never, Swiss authorities. Football breathed a sigh of relief.
Watching this documentary and having read the various books published on FIFA corruption, it is still astonishing how Blatter managed to hover just out of reach of the law for so long, well aware of the sleaze he was overseeing in private, but taking meticulous precautions in public to ensure he left no fingerprints on the loot.
Sepp Blatter
Blatter never came across as malevolent or ruthless like his predecessor did, despite maintaining and exacerbating Havelange's sleaze.
Even when he was finally brought down it was for turning a blind eye to others' looting rather than for lining his own pockets, until a press release from FIFA's Ethics Committee in late 2020 confirmed he had in effect paid himself bonuses in World Cup years, against the rules.
Was he a clever schemer or just in denial? As crooked leaders go he is an interesting case study. Like the Kray twins' mother who pleaded ignorance of her infamous sons she shared a house with for years, Blatter kept a poker face.
"FIFA is not corrupt," he insists absurdly at the beginning of this film, before adding knowingly, "to get the World Cup, everything is possible."
'His Battle with Truth', the title of a famous book by Gitta Sereny about Hitler's architect Albert Speer, could equally apply to the former watch executive from the town of Visp.
The clientelist culture Havelange had brought to Zurich became so well known, that when it came to World Cups, the winning bids were well aware of what needed to be done to secure victory.
"What the Qataris and the Russians were doing was corruption on an industrial scale," explains Heidi Blake, who with fellow Sunday Times journalist Jonathan Calvert, exposed much of the wrongdoing in October 2010.
In a sense though, they were only playing the rules of the game set out by Havelange & Blatter. The TV companies fought each other to get the exclusive contracts, global corporations like Coca-Cola and McDonalds shelled out fortunes to be associated with the World Cup and millions of fans scrambled for tickets.
FIFA's unspoken argument for putting their fingers in the pie was therefore that nobody really cared. The World Cup is the planet's biggest happening and everyone wants to be a part of it, by fair means or foul.
Bribery
"They built their power on bribery," confirms Guido Tognoni, ex-FIFA media director for both Havelange and Blatter.
British writers David Yallop, in his 1999 book How They Stole the Game, and Andrew Jennings, who wrote Foul! seven years later, had tried to tell the world FIFA was up to no good, but their cries largely fell on deaf ears and failed to stop the rot.
That said, Yallop and Jennings are heroes for lighting the way for future investigative journalists to follow.
While officially neutral and apparently hoping for an American hosting in 2022, Blatter had entangled himself with the Qataris ever since billionaire and later FIFA Vice President Mohamed Bin-Hamman bankrolled the Swiss' presidential bid in 1998.
Blatter's successful defeat of Lennart Johansson for the top job then convinced Qatar they could bag the ultimate prize of a World Cup hosting. "We never had a budget; Qatar would do anything to win," says Phaedra Almajid, who worked on the media side of their bid.
So they simply went shopping and bought the votes required to win. Michael Zen-Ruffinen, former FIFA General Secretary, is shown in the documentary admitting certain Ex.Co. members were "influenceable", which is some understatement.
One of them, Amos Adamu, is filmed asking brazenly for bribes to be paid directly into his personal bank account, while another, Reynald Temarii, actually names his price, stating $10-12 million should be enough to bag his vote.
Masters of the Universe
With so much money being thrown at them and heads of state bowing down before them, the 24-man Ex.Co. felt indeed that they were, in the words of Tognoni, "the masters of the universe." When the FIFA President receives the red carpet treatment wherever he goes, it is confirmation of how powerful the organisation is, and how power corrupts so easily.
As Blake and Calvert wisely observe, there are always two World Cup bids from each country in the running - an official one which is shown to the media and a second, more powerful one darting around in the shadows. Of course, the latter does the donkey work.
Hosting two votes simultaneously in 2010 was a gift for the schemers because it allowed bidding nations for different tournaments to collaborate.
Seizing the opportunity, Qatar and Russia signed a joint oil-prospecting plan for the Yamal peninsula, brokered by Bin Hamman as part of a vote-exchange for their respective World Cup bids.
Three years before Euro 2012, a UEFA man told me off the record that they had wanted to strip Ukraine of its hosting rights because of a lack of progress on its infrastructure but that it was politically impossible because of Europe's dependence on oil and gas pipelines from Russia.
Such grand geopolitical concerns are kept far from public view but play key roles in deciding who gets to host the World Cup.
Unmentioned by the documentary, Qatar had also promised a vote exchange with Spain & Portugal, who ended up duped.
"All the fish are sold," the head of the Spanish bid Miguel Angel Lopez hubristically boasted to the press before the final vote, but their joint bid with Portugal won less than half that of Russia's and Lopez was left with egg on his face.
Prestige & Political Gain
Blatter correctly reminds us that staging a World Cup is not about making money as host nations never profit from it financially. It is rather about spending money in exchange for prestige and political gain. Providing it goes well, having a billion people watch your country for a month brings a soft power surge and a feel-good factor which reflects well on sitting governments.
Qatar hosting the World Cup will therefore boost the controversial state and ruling Al Thani family, while muffling the sniping of Sunni neighbours the UAE and Saudi Arabia. As with Argentina in 1978, the human rights gripes will be drowned by the football chants and the victorious cheers of the ruling junta.
Bin Hamman was deeply involved in Qatar's 2022 bid, scurrying around the world and funneling money from his KEMCO corporation to persuade individuals to back his little country, but it still had a mountain to climb to defeat the USA in the final round of voting. It was time for geopolitics to show its hand again.
Enter Nicolas Sarkozy, who wanted Qatar to buy 50 French-made Airbus planes. In return, Qatar had designs on acquiring Paris Saint-Germain, so over dinner at the Elysee Palace, the French President persuaded their FIFA man Michel Platini, who had initially backed the USA for 2022, to change tack and back the Arabs.
Everyone was a winner, except Platini, who never got the top job he craved and ended up banned from football in 2015 along with the rest of Blatter's cronies.
After the infamous Elysee dinner, Platini called Blatter and informed him that four votes intended for the US would now go to Qatar instead, tipping the balance in favour of the Gulf state. In the film, Blatter slates his former Vice-President and long anointed heir for this back-peddling, calling it "My biggest defeat."
Africa
But Blatter's real concern was Bin Hamman. The jet-setting Qatari had secured the votes of Africa for 2022, the same votes which Blatter had courted to deliver his presidency in 1998 and Havelange before him.
With 54 nations, Africa was the crucial continent to have behind you and having charmed it once, it was only a matter of time until Bin Hamman would return to charm it again as part of a bid for the FIFA throne.
The President made the first move in 2011, muttering publicly about changing the World Cup's venue due to Qatar's sweltering summer. Deleting the 2022 hosts on the grounds of weather could have torpedoed Bin Hamman and proved popular in the wider football world, a win-win for Blatter.
Faced with this looming threat, Bin Hamman had no choice but to announce a challenge to the FIFA President on the grounds of needing to save his baby, Qatar 2022. Game on.
Bin Hamman's bid at first seemed to be gaining traction until, in a Mephistophelean masterstroke, Blatter scuppered his rival by arranging a last-minute deal with the Qatari royals to secure the 2022 event.
The price of victory was a winter World Cup smack in the middle of the domestic calendars, to the consternation of the various leagues and worldwide fans, although still preferable to a roasting summer.
This was a move worthy of a mafia boss, though in the film Blatter blatantly denies it. Yet Bin Hamman's otherwise mysterious exit from the race has no other explanation. As Almajid says in the documentary, Blatter was "a diabolical genius."
Momentarily, Jurgen Klinsmann pops up to moan that football bosses have never been fans or players so don't understand the game, conveniently forgetting his compatriot Franz Beckenbauer as well as Platini, two Ex.Co. members who were great players but as administrators were blatant offenders and were both subsequently banned from football.
Taking the Havelange doctrine that money talks loudest, countries squared off against each other for hosting rights and under Blatter, World Cup votes had become poker chips in greater games between nation states.
Whither football?
Whither football? If FIFA had taken its responsibilities seriously, it would never have entertained the idea of a summer tournament in a host nation its own technical report had rated as seriously flawed.
The US and England, the two biggest losers in the 2010 votes, apparently played fairly straight and lost, but at least exited Zurich in 2010 with honour intact.
That said, the Football Association had employed Christopher Steele, best known for the dossier backing the Russia report into President Trump, to spy on Russia's bid.
Steele reported back to London but also spoke to the American authorities, who despite a lack of football knowledge, had begun to sniff a rat or two in the world's biggest sport.
The World Cup had of course touched down in the USA in 1994 and FIFA's multi-million transactions were passing regularly through New York banks. FIFA had left its dirty footprints in passing on US soil but after the 2022 vote the Americans had a motive to investigate.
FBI Investigation
Mike Gaeta, an FBI agent, switched effortlessly from tracking American mafia clans to following FIFA, having noticed the similarities between organised crime families and the organisation's institutional corruption. The Ex.Co. were the family heads and Blatter was the capo, keeping the clan happy with largesse and warming words while maintaining an iron grip on power.
Prying eyes honed in on the Ex.Co.'s sole American Chuck Blazer, who appeared to be hiding in plain sight - obese, splashing money around, dressing up in outrageous costumes, buying historic motors, installing a parrot in his office and buying an apartment in Trump Tower just for his cats, while boasting of his celebrity friendships on his blog.
Chuck Blazer
As with Havelange and Blatter, Blazer had no football background, but got into soccer via advertising, spying its untapped reach in the Americas. The New Yorker, who rose to become CONCACAF's General Secretary soon became known as Mr 10% for his parasitic approach to TV contracts.
The film's second half gets a little sidetracked into Blazer's dark side but this still goes to illustrate what a nefarious bunch were running our game until only recently.
Blazer's lover Mary Lynn Blanks rolls out a story of being violently assaulted by him in her youth before joining him again 25 years later on his FIFA jollies to meet the Queen, Nelson Mandela and Vladimir Putin amongst others.
Dazzled by the $400 bottles of wine and superstar lifestyle, she accepted another dose of domestic abuse and Blazer's philandering as the price of fame.
Once the IRS had joined the FBI in the hunt, Blazer's and Blatter's numbers were up. They found Blazer had been avoiding income tax for years and threatened him with the rest of his life in jail unless he told them all about FIFA's inner workings.
"I'm just a fat crook from Queens," Blazer regretfully told his girlfriend, realising he was trapped.
The FBI had him in its grasp, forcing him to rat on his friends and colleagues in Zurich. In court, Blazer pleaded guilty to wire fraud, racketeering, income tax evasion and money laundering, but he died of cancer before sentencing in 2017.
The dawn raids at the Baur au Lac Hotel in May 2015 was a big media event. US & Swiss authorities had worked together to give it maximum impact by striking just ahead of the FIFA Congress. 42 football administrators were indicted on racketeering and wire fraud - a tableau of institutional corruption totalling around half a billion dollars.
Two days after the Ex.Co. arrests, Blatter won a fifth term as president in an apparently extraordinary act of escapology. But his home nation Switzerland had finally wisened up and charged him with criminal mismanagement and misappropriation four months later.
Even a nation famous for turning a blind eye to dirty money had suffered enough bad publicity for harbouring such crooks.
In October 2015 President Blatter, after 40 years work at FIFA, was suspended by his own organisation and has never returned to football. He theoretically could when his ban expires, but by then he will be in his nineties.
Under his reign, football's governing body had become an Augean stable in the eyes of the world and the wider football family had become desperate for new management.
Corruption
"You cannot convince me to say I am a criminal," Blatter nevertheless insists. In Spring 2021 FIFA banned him a further six years until 2028 for overseeing $49 million bungs to his adjutants while president and taking $24.5 million himself.
Steele suspects he is above prosecution as a Swiss citizen but Blatter, once the world's No.1 jet-setter, is now grounded, unable to travel in case he is arrested by a foreign government. Aged 85, he now confines himself to his native Alps, leather armchairs and espressos as his hair whitens and skin tightens.
The most revealing part of the documentary comes when Blatter is asked directly if he had merely ignored all the wrongdoing to stay in power and he answers, "Maybe", before pausing a while and then correcting himself, "but they are wrong if they say I let them do (that) to maintain my power..we tried to stop that. It was not possible." - That is as close to a confession as we are ever going to get.
Gianni Infantino
The disgraced former FIFA President still feels wronged and harbours grudges against successor Gianni Infantino, inevitably. But marooned in Switzerland he also displays a sense of resignation, redolent of Napoleon on St Helena.
"Blatter shall disappear off the books of FIFA," he laments. "They want me out...but one day they will say 'But who made this?' And somebody said, Oh, it was Blatter."
For all the heroic investigative journalism and FBI work which rid FIFA of its egregious leader and crooked Ex.Co., Russia and Qatar kept hold of their glittering prizes.
The US indicted Qatar last year with paying bribes to win the 2022 bid and with 30 people convicted so far, FBI investigations are ongoing. But the Americans will not derail FIFA's winter in the desert. It is too late for that.
At least World Cups now will be voted for by all 211 FIFA nations, not the 'masters of the universe' Ex.Co. alone. That sounds like progress, so it will be interesting to see how the bidding race for 2030 pans out.
With so much still up for grabs, there will surely be attempts by bidding countries to buy other nations off and snaffle voting blocks by influencing regional football bosses.
Facing money and geopolitics, it is hard to see how the Beautiful Game can triumph.
Christopher Steele sums up the sad reality of competing for the biggest show on earth:
"The World Cup is bound up with the unseen way the world works," he says. "Unseemly and unseen."
-The Men Who Sold the World Cup is distributed by Discovery+.
© Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
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