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DOING THEIR BIDDING

5:00pm Thursday, 24th September 2009

Hosting a World Cup used to be a fairly straightforward business. Only football people really cared where it would be staged - the players, so they could prepare for the local conditions, and the travelling fans (back in the day, few in number), so they could work out how to get there.

But as the competition grew in importance, both as a result of commercial development and global reach via new technologies, a whole bunch of other folks started to care a lot. Especially businessmen and politicians. These days, if a national association wants to bid for a World Cup, their first call will be to the Government; the second to their sponsors.

Given that nearly a dozen countries - some jointly - are involved in bids for WC 2018, the complex task of weighing their relative values (financial, commercial, political, strategic etc) falls to the members of the Fifa Executive Committee - twenty four men from twenty four different countries - and they have until December 2010 to decide.

Though many expect Fifa to adopt the Olympics Committee method of eliminating weaker bids at an early stage (bidding is now an expensive process too), there will in the end probably be three or four nations in with a real chance, and expectations will hot up accordingly. Winning or losing can become very important on a variety of levels: national and, inevitably, personal, as history shows.

The bidding for WC 2002 was an object lesson in just how much 'face' can be staked on winning the hosting rights. In the two years leading up to Fifa's decision in 1996, the most competitive rivalry for hosting rights ever seen broke out between South Korea and Japan. The Japanese had signalled their intentions very early - and appeared quietly confident of success until their long-time historical and cultural opponents announced their intention of making a late bid.

It triggered frenzied activity. The commitment was total. Word spread that hundreds of millions of dollars were available to spend on the bidding process - and billions would be committed to stadium and infrastructure development. It was clear that at both national and some personal levels, losing simply wasn't an option. It had become not just 'a really important thing' but the most important thing of all.

Fifa had never in its history seriously considered a 'joint' staging of a World Cup and, even as the rivalry between Korea and Japan reached fever pitch in 1995, the world governing body continued to insist that the concept was a 'non-runner'; no such option existed. Japan, too, had publicly rejected the idea of co-hosting.

Yet when the press conference was finally held to announce the result, on each side of then Fifa President, Jaoa Havelenge were seated the two most powerful guys in Korean and Japanese football respectively: Chung Mong-Joon and Saburo Kawabuchi, who were informed that there would be no 'losers' and WC 2002 would held for the first time across two countries.

Of course, 'no losers' also meant 'no winners'. Chung looked content while Kawabuchi appeared to be manfully containing a volcanic explosion within his rigid exterior.

It was an unusual decision at the very least. Perhaps, for the first time, those guys on the Fifa Exec Committee realised that - which ever one they chose as hosts - there could be consequences no one wanted to countenance, amongst those who weren't. In the event, the most complex World Cup ever staged went ahead with great success; across two countries; two distinct languages; hundreds of miles of sea, and an ocean of 'historical differences' between them. It was a genuine tour de force of organisational skill and hospitality, and a credit to both nations.

It turned out to be win-win after all.

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