The last golden decade
The past decade may be viewed, in time, as the game’s last golden era. From 2010 to 2019 it scaled the highest peaks of worldwide popularity. No other sport approached even the foothills. No other TV competition, not even the Olympic Games, administered such global hypnosis.
The reverse face of the coin was the tarnishing of that gold by criminal skulduggery in the corridors of power. However, the greed which scarred the game would not have been possible without the zillion-dollar temptations generated by the game’s acceleration into financial overdrive.
Out on the pitch the dominant force was Spanish. The national team launched the decade by triumphing in both the World Cup in 2010 and the European Championship in 2012, while Real Madrid and Barcelona claimed six Club World Cups between them.
In individual terms, the decade was lorded over by the record-obliterating combat between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, with their almost grotesque catalogue of records, trophies and personal awards.
All this despite the multiple assaults delivered by doping, match-fixing, state-approved sport-washing and the game’s betrayal at the hands of powerful but greedy men who should have known better.
The World Cup is the pinnacle whose flag is the game’s progression.
In 2010 it was staged in Africa for the first time, but it was hard work. FIFA had to throw all manner of monies and expertise at South Africa to bring it off and the World Cup will not be going back to Africa any time in the next couple of decades.
Every major sports event comes under fire locally as a wasteful misuse of the host’s financial resources and that was the case in South Africa and again in Brazil four years later. And while FIFA cannot be blamed for the incompetence of domestic politicians, it can take the blame for its own failings as exposed by the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
Teasing clarification is still awaited over the breadth of the influence of then-UEFA supremo Michel Platini – with his last-minute switch to Qatar – as well as the source of bribes offered to South America’s delegates as regaled under oath in a New York court.
By happy contrast, the positive aspect of football was presented by the stars on the pitch. Spain won the 2010 World Cup with a last-gasp goal from Andres Iniesta after Holland tried to kick them off both their triangulated game and the pitch itself. Iniesta was a core member of the Barcelona group whose possession tactic sparked an evolution in style around the world, albeit accompanied by a jibe that opponents were bored to defeat.
Spain, whose coach Vicente del Bosque owed almost everything to the innovative work at Barca of Pep Guardiola, had won the European crown in 2008 and repeated that success in 2012.
The 2012 staging in Poland and Ukraine marked out a pattern for the future with the acceptance of co-hosting, which aims to spread the staging largesse while easing the financial pain and opening up the dream of performing on the biggest stages to an increasing number of nations clamouring for a greater share of both visibility and TV cash.
Other host nations had their own motives, notably the big political winners in 2010: Russia and Qatar.
International promotion was the theme. For Qatar it was soft power; for Russian president Vladimir Putin it was the bread-and-circuses distraction of a “decade of sport”.
No World Cup has ever been organised more efficiently than by the Russians in 2018, who set a devastating standard for Qatar to match in 2022. Then co-hosting will become the norm in 2026 (US, Canada and Mexico) and probably 2030 (in Europe or South America).
UEFA reverted to a lone host for the Euro in 2016, when hosts France were overturned in “their” Final by Ronaldo’s
In individual terms, the decade was lorded over by the record-obliterating combat between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo
Portugal, but UEFA will go co-hosting mad with this summer’s tournament, spread across 12 nations.
The standard of play at the finals of both World Cups and European Championships improved over the decade after disappointing lows in 2010 and 2012 respectively. For the upgrade, the lawmakers can take some credit with efforts to speed up play and the advent of technological assistance. Goal-line technology was an instant success, while VAR brings elements of complicating subjectivity but it will work eventually and the attraction of football in the modern era will be all the better for it.
Improving standards at national-team level have been founded on the work undertaken in the club sphere. Here an increasing understanding of the value of good coaching – from small children to walking-football pensioners – has been crucial. Hence the value of the coaching development programmes devised by FIFA and UEFA and now being emulated worldwide.
A reshuffling of the balance of power among nations over the decade was seen most dramatically in Italy’s regression.
Once upon a time Serie A was Eldorado. No more. The clubs’ earning potential was frozen by the inability to develop their municipal stadia just as English, German and Spanish clubs turned their own matchday homes into commercial enterprises.
Along the way the racism scourge has also exposed Italian football as living in a deeply depressing past. But that issue remains social as much as sport’s.
Spain’s national team are now not quite what they were, while Real Madrid’s Champions League hat-trick between 2016 and 2018 may prove beyond equal for many more years.
But not all of the decade was crowdpleasingly brilliant. Off-screen the level of corruption reached record levels. The nadir was plumbed in 2015 when the US Attorney-General Loretta Lynch lifted the lid on the Americans’ shaming FIFAGate investigation, although some damagelimitation defenders still insist that the scandal should be termed CONCACAFGate because the network of shame began with the tax-haven, pocket-lining antics of Jack Warner, Chuck Blazer and company. In fact it was the unscrutinised membership of the FIFA inner circle – aided and abetted by Sepp Blatter’s wilful blind eye – which enabled a gang of powerbrokers to rob the game.
The FIFAGate process should be wrapped within the first years of the new decade, in the US courts and FIFA ethics committee, but the game will still not be safe. Further aggressive assaults on the spirit of football in particular and sport in general rave on. Match-fixing is one, a perpetual stain; doping is another, albeit less of a threat to football than to the individualised sports such as cycling. A new decade brings new challenges. For FIFA it means maintaining some sort of connection between the breathless rest of the world and Europe, whose relentless onward march under UEFA generates more than 90 per cent of the game’s wealth and will continue to attract its finest players.
Gianni Infantino, provided he does not let it all go to his head, can still be president of FIFA in 2030 when the worth of his expanded World Cup and Club World Cup can be properly evaluated.
Women’s football will continue to expand apace, although one quarter of FIFA’s 211-strong membership still do not have an active women’s national team.
Otherwise, little may change within Infantino’s kingdom and Asia will still struggle to balance east and west amid the Chinese-enhanced political tensions while Africa will remain a challenge largely to itself let alone anyone else.
So much, so clear, it would seem. But not the answer to the most important question of all: who will be our Di Stefano and Puskas or Pele and Cruyff...or Messi and Ronaldo?