The English Premier League Blog

We’ve seen Sky Sports and all the news in England this morning on England losing the 2018 World Cup bid to Russia.

England’s St. Georges’ Cross

The basic premise seems to be that England believes that FIFA are just completely bent – but that’s like saying they didn’t pick us – so they must be crazy and probably corrupt too.

But we think FIFA picks the World Cup sites on how much will the game expand around the world if the tournament takes place in that country.

If you believe that, then Russia and Qatar are good choices, because there’s no doubt football will expand at least in those regions of the world, and football is a big game in both areas of the world.

If England had won the bid, football wouldn’t have expanded at all, because by their own admission England could host the World Cup next month. That was not an advantage to the England bid.

It’s almost like if a country has to do a lot of building new stadia and the like, that’s even an advantage because football will expand greatly in that country and the surrounding area.

What the English could do is to understand why Panarama and The Sunday Times produced those reports that were not at all complimentary to the FIFA executives, and they were the people who did the voting.

That’s not to say what they reported wasn’t true, not at all, but they could have delayed their reports until now – self interest, selfishness and profits is the answer to that question.

Maybe, just maybe, the media in England smashed the bid – and it wouldn’t be the first time that the gossip press in England had looked little short of a disgrace.

We know the feelings in England are very high right now, but if you agree that FIFA indeed picks the countries based on the above premises – it at least makes England’s loss much easier to take, and after all we hammered Australia in the first day of the Adelaide test.

It will be an even worse day for Australia today, because they got just one vote in the first round of voting for the 2022 World Cup.

We have to be very wary of being accused of being really poor losers, and we like the way David Beckham has reacted to the disappointment.

David has gone up in our estimation the way he handled himself as part of England’s bid, and he’s already congratulated the two winners and he is already looking forward.

It’s hardly surprising that David has handled his career so well – and it’s clear when he finally hangs up his boots that he’ll have big big things still to do in his life.

Comments welcome.