If World Cup bid is to have any chance of success, dump the rhetoric MPs launch inquiry into brain injuries
THERE are reasons to be optimistic about the prospect of the UK and Ireland launching a joint bid for the 2030 World Cup, confirmed by Boris Johnson yesterday.
A reformed FIFA and revamped voting system offers hope that the rank corruption which contributed to the humiliation of the failed 2018 bid is a problem of the past, while there are economic, political and structural factors in favour. However, Johnson’s support for the proposal should set alarm bells ringing, even at this fledgling stage.
After announcing his backing in an interview with The Sun, the Prime Minister tweeted: “Let’s bring football home in 2030.” As slogans go, it is a troubling choice. The 2018 bid team banned the phrase ‘football’s coming home’ from any promotional material or conversations in the build-up to their doomed pitch a decade ago, fearing it would come across as arrogant and presumptuous.
To underline the point, at the tournament itself, England’s association with the phrase irritated their rivals in Russia, and Croatian players even used it to goad their opponents after their semi-final win over Gareth Southgate’s side.
Now, the slogan feels particularly uncomfortable, given Johnson’s Government’s record of pursuing nativist, inward-looking policies. Spearing a bid with nationalist rhetoric, which chimes with Brexit, would send a poor message to the rest of the world about the UK and Ireland’s motives for staging a truly global tournament.
Binning any mention of bringing football ‘home’ would be one lesson to take from the 2018 bid, which received just two votes from FIFA’s corrupt ExCo committee in 2010. Another would be to carefully gauge the mood inside FIFA and their confederations before launching into a multi-million pound exercise that may have little hope of succeeding.
Admittedly, this forms part of five nations’ feasibility study which is ongoing, but there have already been suggestions that China could be the preferred 2030 hosts, while there is inevitable romanticism to the idea of a joint South American bid involving Uruguay, to mark the centenary of the first-ever World Cup there, while a joint bid by Portugal and Spain would present stiff competition in a European popularity contest.
In the short term, yesterday’s news felt like another in a long list of football-related Government announcements designed to distract the nation from the gloom of the coronavirus pandemic and lift spirits.
The pledge of £2.8million in support as part of today’s Budget feels more in line with a short-lived PR campaign to boost the Government on these shores, rather than a serious attempt to win over the rest of the world. The previous bid, by contrast, cost £21m.
Ultimately, if the UK is serious about succeeding where it failed in 2018, Johnson needs to do more to ensure this is more than simply a tin-eared PR exercise.
AN INQUIRY into the link between sport and long-term brain injuries has today been launched by MPs.
The Concussion in Sport inquiry, which will be heard by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee from next Tuesday, is in response to a growing number of cases of head injuries.
At the end of last year, former Rugby World Cup winner Steve Thompson (right) was among a host of players to launch legal action against the game’s authorities. Recent figures from the RFU revealed that the severity of concussion in English rugby was at an all-time high.
There has been an increasing number of cases of dementia in former footballers, with Sir Bobby Charlton the fifth player from England’s 1966 World Cup-winning squad to be diagnosed last year. Leading brain charity Headway said last month that football’s new concussion rules were “deeply flawed”.
Over the course of two sessions, the committee will hear scientific evidence on the links between head trauma and dementia and how risks can be mitigated. Committee chair, Julian Knight, said: “We will look particularly at what role national governing bodies should be taking and their responsibilities to understand risks involved for players and what actions might be taken to mitigate them. “We’re seeing a number of cases likely to reach our law courts and we will also look at the implications for sport in the longer term of any successful claim.”
The committee will also investigate the implications for youth sport, funding for further scientific research and how to promote good practice to lessen the risks of injury.