Naturally, football fans know exactly what Bill Shankly meant when he said, “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” Shankly, Liverpool Football Club’s most successful manager in the sixties and early seventies, was speaking from experience. He came from a hardscrabble Scottish mining town and made his living as a professional footballer in the days before the sport became the razzmatazz business of today.
But even Shankly would have understood the arguments of those Brazilians who protested against the $11-billion tab to host a one-month tournament when their country is reeling from slow growth – the economy expanded just 1.9 per cent in the first quarter of this year – joblessness and inflation.
And bread and circuses have nothing on this next argument. The naysayers will be silenced and President Dilma Rousseff will find her re-election prospects strengthen, say the hearties, should Brazil lift the trophy for a sixth time. Okay, we know football borders on hardline religion here. But how exactly will the lives of 21 per cent of Brazilians who live below the poverty line change if a bunch of their sweaty compatriots raise a solid gold trophy and pocket $35 million in prize money?
So far, no economist is buying the proposition that the World Cup and the Summer Olympics (to be hosted in Rio in 2016) will yield the paradise of faster growth and jobs as the pro-Cup geezers claim. Au contraire, most predict stagnation this year in spite of the month-long indulgence on the beautiful game.
The sheer profligacy of the expenditure can be seen in the Manaus stadium where England and Italy played their absorbing tournament opener. The stadium, in the depths of the Amazonian rain forest, is not readily accessible by road. Most construction material was transported by river. It will host just four matches and is unlikely to be used locally afterwards. At $300 million, it will soon become the world’s most expensive bird toilet, as comedian John Oliver put it.
Taken together with the shenanigans over Qatar’s successful bid for the 2022 tournament, and the tiresomely regular corruption charges against FIFA, football’s Enron-like governing body, that accompany every edition of the World Cup, here is an iconoclastic thought. What would happen if the World Cup were scrapped from the footballing calendar?
Consider objectively: all the footballers we watch at the tournaments are professionals who earn regular salaries from their privately owned clubs. Many of them are household names to fans around the world, thanks to satellite broadcasting. We get to watch our favourites every year for nine months of the annual footballing season, when they play with the best footballers their club owners’ money can buy instead of with colleagues who happen to share their nationality.
From a footballer’s point of view, the World Cup isn’t a moneymaking opportunity — even average professionals earn a decent enough wage these days to afford nice houses and cars. True, the World Cup does act as a giant showcase for the big league talent scouts, one reason first-round matches have become increasingly enjoyable with each tournament. But now, even talent scouting has become a regular, structured activity that does not wait for this event held every four years.
So really, apart from the dubious gains of national pride, the World Cup has little raison d'être within the wider dynamics of the sport. And yet... Maybe it’s the hype, or maybe there really is magic, but the footballing calendar without the World Cup is like, well, champagne without bubble. So here’s a solution to minimise the chronic corruption that accompanies the bidding process for World Cups, which appears to swell FIFA’s coffers and pauperise the host nation.
Instead of following the venal Olympic model of bidding out the tournament to one country that then has to suffer (and the bill) the headache of building infrastructure, why not rotate the tournament between the major footballing regions and leverage the infrastructure they do have? To find out how, consult the International Cricket Council, or ICC. Several editions of the World Cup cricket tournament have been spread over South Asia (India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka) and southern Africa. So why not allow, say, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, to co-host the tournament one year and, say, Germany, France and Italy the next, and Japan and South Korea (which actually did very successfully in 2002), West or North Africa another year and so on?
A regular calendar like this would give every team a chance at “home advantage”, spread the burdens, allow the relatively disadvantaged footballing nations to augment infrastructure in a cost-effective way and reduce the opportunities for corruption. It would eliminate patently weird bids like Qatar’s — and FIFA, the organisation, not the officials, can still make money and fulfil its mandate. Fleshing this out is a matter of detail.
Hey Sepp, want to appoint me as advisor? No? Never mind. When Messi runs on to the pitch this Saturday, I’ll remember to forget the muffled protesters and their demands for schools and hospitals. At the very least, I’ll be happy to say: Go, Argentina.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
