Sepp Blatter, the self-proclaimed "captain" of "the FIFA ship," has announced that future World Cup hosts will be determined by a vote of the 208 FIFA member associations as opposed to the 24-man executive committee.
"In the future, the World Cup will be decided by the FIFA Congress," Blatter told the Congress in Zurich. "The executive committee will create a shortlist – but will make no recommendations, only a list – and the congress will decide on the venue."
You can watch the FIFA Congress via live stream here.
Here are a couple of more items to come out of the FIFA Congress:
ELECTION NOT POSTPONED
Despite calls for the postponement of the FIFA presidential election by English FA chairman David Bernstein, the election will proceed as scheduled on Wednesday.
Bernstein's notion was taken to vote, and the member nations that wished to have everything stay on schedule won the vote, 172-17.
Blatter is the only candidate up for election after challenger Mohamed Bin Hammam withdrew amid corruption charges.
GERMAN FEDERATION QUESTIONS 2022 VOTE
The head of the German Federation, Theo Zwanziger, has questioned the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.
Zwanziger, who is running for a spot on FIFA's executive committee but was not a part of it during the World Cup vote, told reporters that, "There is a considerable degree of suspicion that one cannot sweep aside. I must expect that awarding this World Cup under these conditions needs to be examined anew."
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What do you think about the potential change in how World Cup hosts are determined? Did you ever expect the election be postponed? Holding out hope that the 2022 World Cup host will be re-chosen?
Share your thoughts below.
Technically, large amounts of members would make it easier to trace. The more stuff floating around, the easier it is to find. All you need is to find evidence of bribing one country.
Anyone thinking the US or UK will ever get a World Cup again is sadly mistaken if they go to this kind of voting. May as well call it the UN and throw Israel out the window as well.
Most of these countries blame the US for all their ills, not their own corrupt governments. You can count on then voting against the west.
If they voted against in the hopes 2022 is reopened that is not “gutless” that is “smart politics”!
This! But the sad reality is it won’t happen.
Sepp Blatter said his first reform would be to use direct deposits, no more cash in paper bags, for pay-offs.
Note that the big news is opening World Cup voting to all 208 FA’s, not making each vote public.
More voters just equals more of a clusterfuck. Regions such as the 28 member CFU will, and should, band together and vote as a bloc. They’re suddenly much more influential under this system. You won’t necessarily need 28 individual bribes, but rather a promise to spend $xx million on Caribbean football to be distributed by the CFU. It actually might be easier to buy blocs.
I’m not sure why the English FA made a big deal out of postponing the vote — They already said they were going to abstain! I saw one article which said that FIFA should wait until another candidate steps up to run against Blatter, but they weren’t interested in nominating anyone when they had a chance. The English FA made their bed, so let them lie in it.
Funny to have an election with just one person running, sounds like a dictatorship not a democratic election!
It is terrible that the North American region has been cheated twice pretty much. One when the rotation stuff was in place and then due to bribe scandal. At this point I think they should take a vote again for the 2018 and 2022 WC. Even is US does not win it would at least clear this bribe nonsense. But the main thing is that FIFA needs to be cleaned up and that starts from the top! I do wonder if a poll was taken, how many people would go to Qatar to watch the WC. Besides the cultural stuff, security, etc, I wonder how many people will just stay due to the heat alone!
The Guardian blog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/jun/01/fifa-presidential-election-live-blog) on the ‘election’ is fascinating reading. Apparently not even Wales or Northern Ireland supported the English FA’s call to postpone the vote. Wonder how the USSF voted on that? My bet is that Sunil and Co. bent over and grabbed their ankles for Blatter on the off chance that the decision on 2022 is reopened. Absolutely gutless…
So what are they going to do about the 2018 and 2022 world cup, was that even a legitimate vote???
The new system helps with the potential issue of bribes. Under the old system you needed 12-13 votes so if you already had say 8 you only needed to find 4or five more. In this system you will need to bribe a lot more people wich only increases the risk of being caught. Now to make bribery even less likely the vote should be transparent so in order to buy a vote you ahve to buy the decision making process of eachfederation
Don’t think you’ll ever see each vote publicized – it’s too damning a verdict for relationships.
However, you could see the Federation voting. I.e. UEFA – 22 votes US – 5 votes Qatar – 10 votes Australia.
Just makes it more expensive for the bidding countries to pay off the votes…
i don’t think changing the voting system will fix the problem of corruption. as others have said, the new system Blatter proposes will give a unfair advanatage to the larger confederations. it won’t solve the core of the issue: that people are free to bride others with no consequence.
an organization outside of FIFA (interpol, un?) needs to be free to investigate FIFA whenever they please in the interest of the millions of people who give FIFA money to enjoy the game. much like how a large part of the fbi involves searching for corruption in the government, this is one way to keep FIFA honest.
They took 5 bids to a vote and the U.S. went against 4 Asian bids. An Asian country might also vote against other Asian countries so they may win a bid sooner rather than later. Since Qatar won this vote how long do you think it might take for the WC to return to Asia? Right now a federation must wait two cycles before hosting again. I do not think Japan, South Korea, Australia, or China want to wait 20 more years to host the WC.
Good luck with that! There are so many people in the system enriching themselves that they will fight tooth and nail not to change the system. And it is not tiny third world countries or unknowns. I bet you will have a hard time trying to get a straight answer from our own Blazer.
You should really google an article by Bill Archer for Grant when he was ‘running’ for office where he outlines some interesting facts about the working of FIFA.
Cheers
If you could write a poem about politics it would go something like that– well put!
Just gonna put this out there. The US Virgin Islands national football federation doesn’t even have a website. Yet, their vote (I would think part of the Caribbean voting block) will count just as much as Chuck Blazer’s.
So After the vote, Blatter comes out and says it was a fair process and the dissenters are just sore losers. Hey Blatter, if the process was clean and fair, why would there now be a need for change? This is laughable. By proposing a change to the process aren’t you admitting that the existing process is broken? If so, the only logical response would be a new vote under the new process.
But the the damage has been done. The bribes can’t be un-bribed. Blatter is a egotist and FIFA is a joke of a governing body.
208 requires a lot more votes to buy as opposed to 24.
Indeed buying 2/3 of the votes costs 200K less. It is good for everybody…
Somebody can call me on the blasphemy but it sucks to be an American soccer fan some times.
Yes the FAs should vote and they should be public. These should not be individual votes, but collective votes. American fans should have a right to know how U.S. Soccer votes, for example. They are representing the country, not one person.
Considering its the English FA, it is probably either A) the mere fact of their existence or B) been highly pretentious. The British media isn’t helping.
From a historical perspective there is a lot of bad blood by Argentina towards England because of the conflict over the islands. And the extension to the US was because they lobbied like crazy for the US to side with a fellow American country, but instead the US went with the English.
So I can see where they were coming from and don’t fault them for it.
Cheers
What has the English FA done to piss everybody off so much?
But it would be a more efficient and affordable corruption, with less cash needed per vote!
Ah, the age old question of Democracy vs. Republic. It might be harder for people to be bought off with 207 members, but at the same time you’ll have a lot more WC’s in places that are really fit to have them. This really won’t change anything, it’ll just change who’s getting blamed for the poor decisions and the corruption which is why Blatter is willing to do it.
Good points about the challenges of voting by confederation blocks.
They’re going to have to come up with a hard rotation schedule or else CONEMBOL is going to be on the outside looking in for a disproportionate number of World Cups since they only have 10 members. If it’s between Argentina and Japan who do you think the 45 other Asian representatives will vote for?
Here’s a reminder of how many votes in each confederation:
Asia: 46
Africa: 55
CONCACAF: 40
CONEMBOL: 10
OFC: 11
UEFA: 53
Of course IF they were to absorb OFC into Asia and merge the CON’s then we’d have Asia: 57, UEFA:53, Africa: 55, Americas: 50…but that ain’t happening any time soon.
Is somebody gonna yell “You Lie” when Blatter talks?
It is depressing to see the English FA lambasted like this for speaking the truth. And not just from Fiji and the like, but from the Argentinian and Spanish FAs as well.
Head of the Argentinian FA: “Yes, I voted for Qatar, because a vote for the US would be like a vote for England. And that is not possible.” Oh, and this gem: “But with the English bid I said: Let us be brief. If you give back the Falkland Islands, which belong to us, you will get my vote. They then became sad and left.”
Maybe he was making a joke, but somehow I doubt it.
(this is all coming from the Guardian’s liveblog)
It is #### through and through not just the top. Well said.
Blatter sure likes to hear himself speak. All this “Captain of the ship” and “Help the game move forward” stuff is fine and dandy…in a speech. But the truth is that FIFA has been exposed as a huge, corruption filled, whorehouse with each representative dirtier than the next.
How about doing the honorable thing, Blatter? Step down. That will show what kind of captain you are. That would show everyone that you truly love and respect the game. That would “Help the game move forward”.
The only thing you have been captain of is the corruption “ship” yet you take no responsibility for it. You just go on yammering and yammering about changes that wont even need to be actually used for at least another 7-8 years. What a joke.
You are just lucky, that when the cameras were rolling, you opened the envelope that said “Qatar” and not the one with all of the Qatari money in it.
1. The “have all members vote” is an absolute “FU” to England and the UK (which are permanent members of the ExCom I believe).
2. It actually makes the corruption issue even more of a factor. Okay now, if we did a revote for the WC, you’d get all of Asia and the Middle East voting for Qatar. How many votes would the US really get? You’ll still get a lot of voting by continent, especially lesser developed nations. I can see the next couple of WC votes focusing on Asia and Africa. Meanwhile, unless the US swings deals with the Caribbean nations, we’re becoming irrelevant. It’s exactly why there’s a security council in the UN rather than a vote by the entire body on certain issues.
The problem isn’t the Excom. It’s not even FIFA. It’s that the vast majority of FA’s are incredibly corrupt and almost all FA’s are at least partially corrupt and very incompetent. And FIFA manifests that and the ExCom is at the top of the pyramid. The ExCom members aren’t especially or uniquely corrupt, they’re simply the FA members who’ve played politics well enough to get a cushy assignment.
I don’t know about the voting change. Obviously, something had to be done but this seems like a good way to bribe mass groups of small countries and overwhelm the ones with actual power. If you are Qatar trying to buy the World Cup again, instead of giving 500K or whatever it was to each individual exec committee member, you can give 50K to 10 small members (who as Grant Wahl pointed out are cash starved) Furthermore, the large amount of members might make it harder to trace. Do that en masse and you’ve got more votes for less money.
Something needs to be done and hopefully this works but I have my doubts.
I support this change. It’ll be harder to bribe 207 voting members than 24 execs.
Good for Zwanziger. Maybe he is raising this issue as a proxy for some other country??? But when all is said and done, I can’t wait to be disappointed a second time that we aren’t getting WC in 2022
Putting the World Cup hosting decision before the entire Congress will make it somewhat more difficult to rig, but until they make all of the votes public there’s always going to be endemic corruption.
i hope other FA’s join Germany’s push to investigate the 2022 Qatar WC bid.
The World Cup voting change is the way it should have always been. I still worry about this Confederation-block voting that is going on in the Presidential election. But it is absolutely fairer than having the Ex-Co voting.
And kudos to the England FA for standing up against FIFA.
Won’t expanding the vote to the 208 member congress instead of the 24 member executive comittee make it even harder to monitor/police for vote buying and corruption?