Inside the World Cup

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David Owen on a World Cup deal between Spain and Portugal

June 1 - With world football administrators gathering in Nassau for FIFA’s annual Congress on June 2 and 3, you could argue this week marks the real start of the campaign to win the right to host the 2018 World Cup.

As anyone interested in football will know, a humdinger of a race is in prospect, with nine candidates – Australia, Belgium/Holland, England, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Spain/Portugal and the United States – on the starting-line.

What is more, FIFA’s decision to stage the contest for the 2022 World Cup at the same time has added a whole extra layer of possible permutations.

No fewer than 11 contestants – the above nine plus Qatar and South Korea – are lining up for that 2022 race, although at most nine will make it to the decisive vote in December 2010.

This is because bidders from the same confederation as the eventual 2018 winner are barred from acting as host in 2022.

I imagine game theorists are rubbing their hands together in glee at the sheer complexity of it all.

But will all nine 2018 contestants make it as far as the finishing-line in 18 months’ time?

I have to say I think that about as likely as newly-promoted Burnley winning the English Premier League next season.

For one thing, Sepp Blatter, the FIFA President, is widely assumed to have a marked preference for single-country bidders.

If you remember, Tunisia five years ago withdrew from the race for the 2010 World Cup at the eleventh hour after being refused the option of co-hosting the tournament with Libya.

Earlier this year that Blatter told a South American Football Confederation meeting that: “As soon as there is a [sole] candidacy or three or four relevant candidacies, we are directly going to reject the double candidacies.”

You have to wonder whether Belgium and Holland will deem it worth continuing if the cards really do turn out to be stacked against them in this way.

Spain and Portugal, though, I would expect to persevere.

Indeed, it has been suggested to me that the outline of a deal might already have been agreed.

Under this, I am told, Portugal would be restricted to hosting matches in a single first-round group – presumably designed to enable the national team to play its early matches at home – while FIFA, in effect, would no longer view the candidacy as a joint bid.

Another bid I would not be entirely surprised to see fail to stay the course is that from Russia.

The country is already staging the 2014 Winter Olympics at the Black Sea resort of Sochi, so that has to be its priority.

In normal times, you would expect it to be able to take the demands of hosting both events in its stride – particularly given the four-year gap.

And maybe it still will.

But of course these are anything but normal times.

Broadly, the longer the global economy remains in the doldrums, the greater the chances, in my view, that Moscow will withdraw.

I also wonder about Mexico, a country that has already hosted two World Cups, in 1970 and 1986.

At some point, I would expect pressure to mount for either it or the US to pull out, so as to allow regional support to coalesce around one candidate, the better to exploit what will probably be split European and Asian votes.

If this happened, I think it likely that Mexico would be the one to give way.

After all, a third World Cup would be an unprecedented honour and the US could probably assemble a stronger commercial case for being awarded the tournament.

I hope this is wide of the mark, but, at this stage, I also think it impossible to rule out swine flu, which has hit Mexico especially hard, from having some influence in this contest.

One further factor that could, I feel, lead to pressure to thin down the field is the sheer tightness of the timetable.

The due date for 11 weighty bid books to thud into FIFA’s letter-box in Zurich is May 14 – just seven months before the two hosts are to be chosen.

If there really are 11, the task of properly evaluating them in this time-frame will be Herculean.

Bear in mind that World Cup venues are spread the length and breadth of the country, unlike their Olympic counterparts which – football and often sailing apart – are concentrated in one city.

A proper inspection of the Indonesian blueprint, for example, could conceivably involve trips to a dozen or more of that country’s 17,500 islands.

I’m not sure it will come to that: Indonesia, generally seen as the rank outsider, is another of those one could see pulling out before the final whistle is blown on the campaign.

FIFA to ban gifts during World Cup campaign

● Since I wrote about him in March , Petrus Damaseb (pictured), Judge President of the Namibian High Court and acting Chairman of FIFA’s Ethics Committee, has been in touch to fill me in on the body’s role in the World Cup bidding contest.

He tells me the committee has now taken ownership of the document that will govern the process and that this “commits all involved to high ethical standards”.

According to Judge Damaseb, this document “specifically prohibits any attempt to influence the FIFA Executive Committee or any FIFA official.

“It also prohibits direct or indirect provision of gifts or advantages to FIFA officials or their family members.

“The only gifts allowed are ‘occasional gifts of symbolic or trivial value’.

“It also prohibits collaboration or collusion with a view to unfairly influence the outcome of the bidding process.”

Judge Damaseb assures me that committee members stressed at a meeting under his chairmanship in February that they are “going to act independently and to earnestly investigate and act on any credible allegation of wrongdoing by any person or body involved”.

But he adds: “The challenge, of course, is that those with information make it available to the [Ethics Committee] to act on.

“If things are done furtively and do not come to the attention of the Committee, there is very little we can do.

“But once there is credible evidence of potential wrongdoing, we will act.”

The Judge says that sanctions “range in seriousness from a caution or warning to suspension.

“In the present context, it could involve disqualification…”

He says that the governing document “even mentions criminal prosecution if corruption is uncovered.

“If, in our investigations, we come across prima facie evidence of corruption, we will hand it over to national law enforcement authorities having jurisdiction.”

Should Hampden Park be an Olympic venue

● How utterly pathetic that Great Britain’s (sic) 2012 Olympic football teams are seemingly to be restricted to English players only.

This Olympic tournament could have provided something really special: a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch the best young British footballers playing together.

Now, at a stroke, the men’s competition is set to be relegated, for the domestic audience at least, into little more than a glorified trial: a useful chance for Fabio Capello, or some successor, to test out fringe players who might make it into his squad for the World Cup in Brazil two years later.

If this arrangement is confirmed, I think there would be a strong case for LOCOG to scratch Hampden Park and Millennium Stadium from the 2012 venue-list.

Apart from anything else, I doubt every match on the schedule is going to prove a huge draw; some more bijou stadia might be appreciated.

David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering last year's Beijing Olympics. An archive of Owen’s material may be found by Twitter users at www.twitter.com/dodo938.