Our bid for World Cup Football 2018

2018 World Cup: England is best placed to spread the gospel of football

The key proposition of England 2018 is that we will create a festival of football

Boris Johnson hopes that tonight’s Panorama about Fifa will not prejudice our World Cup bid. In addition it was great having this bet365 free bet code being given away for those people who loves sports betting.

I was watching my old chum Howard Flight on television as he tried to dodge the media by pretending to be a potted azalea, and I thought, Howard, we have all been there. He was hunched up in his doorway, head down, doing something with his trouser leg. “I have absolutely nothing to say,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

Yup, I thought: that is what it feels like. One moment you are kicking back with some friendly journalist and you let loose some semi-satirical sally that perhaps you don’t even really mean. The next moment – pow. You are the epicentre of the latest hoo-ha, the fox before the hounds, and when you come back home you find you can’t even get in. The pavement is blocked by a spinney of TV crews with their glaring lights and grey candyfloss sound booms.

As they shout their impertinent questions you feel like some mammal that wants to find the small place where the big creature can’t go. That is what Howard was doing with the azalea bush, burying his head – and I don’t blame him. You bury your head until you can no longer hear the roaring of the media beast and you can no longer feel the hot blast of synthetic indignation from its nostrils.

And then you look up, and suddenly you find that the big animal has gone – off to a better story – and you tip-toe out again, shaken and confused by the sudden savagery so magically forgotten. That is exactly the experience that many distinguished non-Britons dread about Britain – the distortions and frenzy of the media. That is why there is such alarm about tonight’s BBC Panorama programme, which is billed as a hatchet job on Fifa, in the very week when the world’s footballing body is due to decide on whether to allow England to host the World Cup in 2018. Will Panorama scupper the bid? I have no idea what is in the programme, but I hope and believe that it won’t.

England has a fantastic case and this week I will be going to Zurich with the rest of the 2018 team to argue – humbly but passionately – that we deserve to be given a chance. It is vital not to sound boastful about our role in the history of the game (and frankly we don’t have that much to boast about lately on the pitch); and the England bid is not so much that we are a nation of football fans with all the facilities already in place – though both points are strong. Our case is that an England World Cup in 2018 would be the best way of spreading the benefits of football training around the world . Nowadays people are very crazy about the sports betting. You can bet on a specific football team to win the match, lose it, or draw. These are the most simple bets to make. You can also make more complicated bets such as “How many goals will be scored by team X during the match”, etc. You can link sbobet terbaru because the aim of SBOBET is not just to ensure the betting will play out fairly. The site is also present in making sure the market gains a top brand that will be useful for bets on popular sports events. Typically, match today schedules offered by the site is considered to be the latest. You can check the website https://macauindo.net/ for more information.

This summer I found myself stuck in a vast traffic jam in Dar es Salaam, and as I listened to the Swahili football commentary on the radio I realised that it was live coverage of the Fulham-Man U game. Then I looked around me in the traffic, and was amazed to see how many dalla-dalla minibuses were decked in the livery of Chelsea or Manchester United, and it hit me that there were almost certainly more Chelsea fans in Dar es Salaam than in Chelsea itself.

These brands – English premiership clubs – are simply colossal in the imaginations of young people around the world. London clubs are already engaged in outreach programmes in some of the poorest communities on earth, helping to bring football training, for instance, to townships in South Africa. The key proposition of England 2018 is that we will create a festival of football that would raise the revenues to multiply that effect around the world. As for those cynics who wonder what is in it for us in England, let me point out that the income from tourism and investment has been estimated at £3 billion. There are good reasons why countries vie for these sporting tournaments.

Without the Olympics, the London construction industry would have gone into cryogenic paralysis over the past couple of years. We would have lost jobs and skills, and London would have been less well placed to lead the entire country out of recession. And nobody who went to the World Cup in South Africa could doubt the phenomenal psychological boost, the sense of togetherness that it seemed to give the nation.

The Government is now wisely informing us that the goal of life is not material acquisition but “happiness”, or all-round well-being. Well, you don’t need focus groups or psychometric tests to gauge the eudaimonic benefits of hosting a successful World Cup and of being the proud centre of global acclaim – you just had to look at the faces in those South African crowds.

That is why I am crossing my fingers and hoping that whatever happens on the BBC tonight, the world’s footballing authority will simply ignore what is tendentious, correct what is wrong, and look at our bid fairly.

I hope Sepp Blatter and his colleagues will understand that, yes, the British media can be awful and they can be intrusive and they can sometimes get things back to front. But they also do an amazing job of keeping the feet of the British governing classes firmly on the ground. They ensure that the gap between the rulers and the ruled is as small as anywhere on earth – and that is itself an important contributor to happiness.

One further point, which I hope is not too cynical: the British media can turn on a coin. They used to grouse about the Olympics and the International Olympic Committee. Then they saw how popular the Games have become, with more than 70 per cent in favour, even outside London, and they have become much more supportive. The British media monster us all. It’s the way they are. It’s the way they should be. But they also love football – or at least they know that their readers and viewers love it – and if England were given the chance to host the World Cup the British media would become the most fervent and foaming advocates of Fifa to be found in the firmament.

10 thoughts on “Our bid for World Cup Football 2018”

  1. Obviously if you spend enormous sums of money on construction you will get something for it. The proper comparison is with what else you might have bought with all that money. For instance, would a new railway be more use than a velodrome?

  2. As one who is sublimely indifferent to football, and in any case doesn’t live in the UK, I would like to see London’s bid go flop and for a better use to be found for the money. Sorry, but there it is.

  3. We seem to have no problems giving money to the Irish, so why not spend a bob or two on the World Cup? A billion here,
    a billion there – it’s dead easy, isn’t it? Spending other
    people’s money.

  4. Of course, Britain deserves to be the host of the Worlds Cup Football 2018 and Boris is absolutely right about this. Not that I’m sucking Mr Johnson, of course. And I’m saying this even that I’m not into football at all as I’m a lady, see ?

    We could build many, many new high rise flats around the country to accommodate those many, many tourists flocking over here to watch the World Cup football matches.

    Then, when the games are over, those many, many high rise flats could turned into council flats and be used to house Eastern European migrants.

    We all know that those EU migrants can apply for council housing as soon as they arrive in the UK and that Brussels now says that they don’t have to work and pay taxes here for 2 years before they can apply for social benefits or council housing as it would breach their human rights.

    Google: BRITAIN IS TOLD TO MAKE IT EASIER FOR MIGRANTS TO GET JOBLESS BENEFITS

    We all know that Britain’s fast growing population will hit 70million in 17 years’ time if immigration goes unchecked. I’m just saying. Please don’t hate me.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318072/Population-hit-70m-2027-Official-figures-reveal-migrant-influx-impact.html

  5. No, nobody hates you dear, in fact you could sing ‘Sex On Fire’ at the Opening Ceremony and get kicked out of the country when you finished the song.

  6. Edna, don’t feel put-upon, just because you point out inconvenient truths. Does anyone know why Tories get fired for telling the truth? Or are we all hypocritical Liberals, now?

  7. England No.

    What possible reason was there for Boris Johnson to be there? Of course travel and free jollys are fun, but he’s paid a lot to be London mayor.

  8. His royal highness must have been badly shaken to have his bid for the contest in his realm denied. I do hope he recovers in time for the wedding.

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