{"id":1944,"date":"2015-11-18T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T09:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/?p=1944"},"modified":"2015-11-18T10:03:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T09:03:56","slug":"the-player-played-frank-lowy-and-australias-failed-world-cup-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idrottsforum.org\/forumbloggen\/the-player-played-frank-lowy-and-australias-failed-world-cup-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"The player played: Frank Lowy and Australia\u2019s failed World Cup bid"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"epa02156558
Billionaire Frank Lowy was done like a dinner in the shark-infested waters of international football, led by Sepp Blatter (right). EPA\/WALTER BIERI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Swiss police, acting on FBI intelligence, swooped in May and arrested<\/a> several officials from FIFA, world football\u2019s governing body, the game seemed up at last. Years of FIFA scandal and whitewash suddenly came into sharp focus.<\/p>\n

Many countries that had bid to host the World Cup and lost in dubious circumstances \u2013 Australia among them in its vain quest to hold the 2022 edition \u2013 expected the whole house of cards to fall in short order.<\/p>\n

But this is the FIFA melodrama, so inevitably there were more twists in the tale. President Sepp Blatter was re-elected<\/a>, then announced his intention<\/a> to step down. In September, he came under police investigation<\/a> and was later suspended<\/a> by FIFA\u2019s ethics committee.<\/p>\n

Yet, as with the most insistent telemarketing, there was more. Blatter then revealed<\/a> that the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar stemmed from the collapse of a pre-arranged Cold War-style compromise:<\/p>\n

For the World Cups it was agreed that we go to Russia [2018] because it\u2019s never been in Russia, Eastern Europe, and for 2022 we go back to America. And so we will have the World Cup in the two biggest political powers.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s hosting of 2018 was safe. But the perfidious French \u2013 led by UEFA president Michel Platini, now also suspended<\/a> for allegedly receiving a \u201cdisloyal\u201d payment \u2013 and their voting bloc reneged on the 2022 deal, Blatter claimed, after former French president Nicolas Sarkozy met then-Qatari Crown Prince al-Thani and agreed to the sale of Rafale fighter jets.<\/p>\n

If Blatter is telling the truth, then internal FIFA machinations made a farce of the whole bidding process and humiliated all the other aspiring hosts who arrived in Zurich with hopeful hearts in December 2010 \u2013 Spain\/Portugal, Netherlands\/Belgium and England (2018), and the US, South Korea, Japan and Australia (2022).<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s risible return of a single executive committee vote for a A$43 million public investment, courtesy of the Rudd government, was the subject of Tuesday night\u2019s ABC documentary, Played: Inside Australia\u2019s Failed World Cup Bid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Australia had already demanded its money back<\/a> from FIFA when the goalposts were moved and the 2022 World Cup postponed until later in the year because of Qatar\u2019s blistering summer heat. But the latest word from Blatter that Australia never stood a chance gives its bid team even more reason to cry foul. It also provides plenty more ammunition for those demanding answers as to why it threw itself into the World Cup cesspit in the first place.<\/p>\n

The ABC program claims to offer \u201cthe inside story\u201d of Australia\u2019s disastrous World Cup bid. It offers film of strategy meetings, speech practice sessions and even footage from a camera smuggled into FIFA\u2019s now-infamous Zurich hotel of choice, Baur au Lac. There, we are told, taking pictures is \u201cverboten\u201d (forbidden).<\/p>\n

The program certainly rounded up some big players. They include Football Federation Australia (FFA) president and bid leader Frank Lowy, ex-prime minister and Lowy ally John Howard, Hollywood film director Phillip Noyce and good ol\u2019 Sepp himself. As a range of people and FIFA spaces float across the screen, two contrasting figures dominate \u2013 the pugnacious Lowy and the oleaginous Blatter.<\/p>\n[youtube http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gCmsxIjEn-E&w=460&h=259]\n

Sepp Blatter calls on Australia to \u2018accept\u2019 that it lost its World Cup bid.<\/p>\n

Presenter Leigh Sales persistently probes Lowy\u2019s motivations and feelings. She is constantly met with a wall of frustration and outrage by her interview subject. The billionaire shopping mall operator, striker of sundry smart business deals, had been done like a dinner in the shark-infested waters of international football.<\/p>\n

Having rebooted football in Australia in 2005 \u2013\u00a0with a bucket of money, this time from the Howard government \u2013 and overseen its 2006 return to the World Cup for the first time in 32 years, and then taken Australia out of minor Oceania into the big-league Asian Football Confederation, leading a successful bid to host the World Cup would have been the culmination of Lowy\u2019s glittering business and sporting careers.<\/p>\n

Instead, Lowy\u2019s failure turned him from future-maker to fantasist. He was a victim of \u201chubris\u201d who, implied former FFA CEO John O\u2019Neill, had broken the rule: \u201cdon\u2019t believe your own bullshit\u201d.<\/p>\n

Lowy\u2019s humiliating demise in world football has a Shakespearean tinge, akin to King Lear succumbing to flattery in the way of older men living in luxurious circumstances and used to getting their own way.<\/p>\n

Lowy\u2019s nemesis is Blatter. The self-satisfied smirk of Blatter \u2013 remarkably brazen in view of his own much more serious travails \u2013 betrays the Machiavellian pleasure of a man who outwitted another of diminutive stature (he makes more than one reference to his and Lowy\u2019s shortness in the program). He cannot help but parade his worldliness in throwing Lowy\u2019s apparent naivety into stark relief.<\/p>\n

The program tends to go along with the narrative of Australians as innocents abroad in FIFA-land, while using the device of the countdown to the winner announcement for additional dramatic tension despite the already-known car crash climax. But by spending too long inside the bid, the program only hurriedly airs wider views, such as those of one-time FFA insider, whistleblower and reform activist Bonita Mersiades<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The leading investigative reporter of FIFA, Andrew Jennings, has poured scorn<\/a> on the Australian World Cup bid. He called for heads to roll. Jennings’ trenchant critique is signally absent from this program, which aired on the very day that Lowy passed the FFA ball to a new chairman \u2013 his son, Steven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

FIFA may have seen the player played. But despite Australia being $43 million in the hole, the Lowy football dynasty lives on.<\/p>\n

\n

Previously published by\u00a0theconversation.com<\/a>\u00a0(Academic rigour, journalistic flair).<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Copyright \u00a9 David Rowe 2015<\/strong>
\nEmail:\u00a0d.rowe@uws.edu.au<\/a>
\nTwitter: @rowe_david
\nWebsite:\u00a0http:\/\/www.uws.edu.au\/ics\/people\/researchers\/david_rowe<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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