Lets not let the truth get in the way of a story in one of the biggest papers in this country ehQuote:
Cup bid a world class scandal
Rebecca Wilson From: The Daily Telegraph December 04, 2010
IT IS the greatest sporting scandal in the history of this country - a folly aimed purely at the gratification of a few egos that cost Australian taxpayers $45 million.
The failed World Cup soccer bid for 2022 ended exactly as many outside the sport had predicted. Australia managed to secure a single vote to be eliminated in the first round, well short of the smug predictions that had gone on for months prior to the bid.
Most Australians went merrily along for the World Cup ride, convinced by those in charge that this would be of such enormous benefit to the country that anyone who dared to object was seen as un-Australian.
We were told that this would be the making of the world game in the Asia Pacific region.
This was the world game's time, and nobody, not even a grumpy AFL boss Andrew Demetriou, could stop the train.
He, by the way, was the one who told soccer bosses to go and stick it when they told him he would have to stop his competition at finals time if the big game came to town.
The Football Federation of Australia even selected hundreds of 10-year-olds in a target 22 squad, convincing their parents that these kids could be Socceroos playing in a World Cup at home. These boys were kept up by their parents to watch the bid announcement from Zurich and ended up in tears.
With a World Cup in 2022, Socceroo Tim Cahill suggested that our children's futures would be secured forever more.
That kind of hyperbole has masked a hundred problems within the game at grassroots level that may never be repaired as a result of this folly.
While junior sporting clubs around Australia bleed for every cent of government money, Westfield boss and one of the country's richest men, FFA Chairman Frank Lowy, managed to extricate $45 million from the public purse for his grandiose vision.
Lowy has essentially been running Australian soccer for many years. He convinced former Federal Sports Minister, Kate Ellis, to give him the cash which was aimed purely at gathering votes from 22 FIFA delegates.
The money was spent on largesse. Not a cent of it went on the sport's development at either senior or junior level. Soccer chiefs and the sport's stars have been gallivanting from country to country for more than a year, massaging, cajoling, begging for the right to host the World Cup.
In the end, it all came to nothing. A cheesy, but expensive, mini-feature film starring a cartoon kangaroo had absolutely no impact. The single vote has cost us $45 million. God knows how much it has cost the sport.
Emails which have come my way from irate soccer fans accuse commentators like me of anti-soccer bias. In fact, abuse floods my way even when I dare to call it soccer.
These obsessed fans believe the anti-"football" element would essentially be killed off with the glory of a World Cup in Australia. They are the ones who have been brainwashed by an organisation which cannot even run a successful national competition.
The A-League is bleeding. Crowds are down, television ratings are dreadful and not a single free-to-air television executive wants to know about it.
The FFA has spent most of its money on an elite and ageing group of players for more than a decade with very little international success.
Our best 16 and 17-year-olds break all land speed records to move from Australia the moment they get the chance.
The fact that not a cent of the $45 million was spent on a single Australian soccer player is scandalous.
Every junior club in Australia could have survived and prospered for five years off the back of that sort of money.
Even with a World Cup, nobody stood back for a minute to see what the downside was to hosting an event of this magnitude in Australia.
One look at the legacy of the World Cup in South Africa would have told them. Images of poverty-stricken settlements alongside state of the art soccer stadiums were shameful reflections of an event that a country like South Africa could not afford.
There will be tut-tutting about the bid process and its lack of transparency. The Australian delegation will blame the vote stacking antics as the reason we lost. But the truth is that the process has never been any different. It has always been on the nose.
In the meantime, we will all arrive at our under-funded, bumpy sports grounds this morning as volunteers. We will referee, cut the oranges or sell the coffee. We will fork out our $100 for the season to ensure the club or school gets through another year on the smell of an oily rag. And we will all wonder what the bloody hell we could have done with even a sniff of that $45 million.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/ ... 5965329550
rebecca wilson.....
