The Ugly Game: The Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup

by Heidi Blake

  By 2008 the 72-year-old Blatter had been the president of FIFA for ten years, and the decade at the helm of world football’s governing body had taken its toll on his private life. There had been three failed marriages, producing one daughter, and plenty of salacious rumours about his private tastes and habits into the bargain. Blatter had once been president of the World Society of Friends of Suspenders – a campaign group pushing for women to abandon wearing tights and go back to saucier stockings – and he kept a succession of glamorous women dangling on his arm, so far as he had time.

  But Blatter didn’t have friends as such, and he couldn’t make these girlfriends stick for long. It wasn’t so much that he devoted his life to his work: his work was his life. At weekends he could often be found alone busying himself in his grand office at FIFA’s headquarters. So much of his time was spent on all-expenses-paid business for football’s governing body that he barely needed to draw his salary – rumoured to be several million – although this, like much of FIFA’s opaque accountancy, remains a closely guarded secret, kept from even the Exco. His attention to detail was as legendary as his political charm. Members of the Exco were used to receiving his gushing emails celebrating their birthdays or congratulating them on some recent success, such as re-elections which retained their positions at football’s top table.

  Keeping his grip on power was what mattered most to Blatter, as Bin Hammam knew to his cost. To hold down the job as world football’s top administrator you had to keep the support of the Exco and tame the unruly bunch of federations who each had one vote at the organisation’s annual congress. It was not sufficient to send out a few fawning emails. Blatter had learnt from his mentor, João Havelange, that the key to success was to use FIFA’s ever-expanding wealth to achieve your own political ends.

  In the four years leading up to the 2006 World Cup in Germany, FIFA had raked in more than £2 billion which could be distributed to win favours. Three-quarters of the federations had become financially dependent on FIFA, which paid them $250,000 annually, plus a bonus in World Cup years. Without those payments many of the federations would be bankrupt, so they needed a president who kept the cash flowing. Under Blatter, the handouts were expanded to help exactly the type of smaller nations that shored up his presidency with their votes. FIFA’s targeted development schemes such as the Goal Project (chaired by none other than Bin Hammam) and the Financial Assistance Programme doled out sums of up to $400,000 a time, which enabled top football officials in impoverished nations to cement their standing at home by building artificial pitches and sparkling new administrative headquarters. Though these were ostensibly laudable objectives, the payments were also a neat way to win friends and influence people.

  At the same time, Blatter used his patronage to reward supporters and keep opponents in plain sight by appointing them to FIFA’s myriad committees which met a few times a year to discuss everything from sports medicine to beach soccer. A committee member could easily earn $100,000 and more each year from FIFA by claiming generous day rates and expenses. The Exco was by far the most important committee. Blatter had not only doubled their numbers to two dozen, but he had also secretly introduced the six-figure ‘salary’ for each member, which was a welcome addition to the wages they earned from their day jobs back home. As accommodating as ever, FIFA made the payments available in cash which could be picked up from the finance office in tax-free Switzerland. It was, of course, pocket money to Bin Hammam. When in Zurich he would often send his chauffeur or Meshadi to pick up envelopes from the finance office containing $10,000 or $20,000 in crisp new bank notes. It was money that could be dispersed to friends and underlings.

  The only thing Bin Hammam knew for sure about Blatter was: the old fox would do whatever he needed to cling to power. Nothing more, and nothing less. So if Blatter continued to believe it was in his political interests to lend his backing to Qatar’s World Cup dream, that’s just what he would do. If for some reason the wind changed, Blatter’s promises of support would diffuse like the dust in a desert shamal.

  Bin Hammam mixed easily with his other ‘brothers’ on the FIFA executive committee. At events in Zurich and around the world, he glided effortlessly from handshake to handshake, his serene countenance revealing little of the steely determination that lay beneath. The Exco saw themselves as swashbuckling globe-trotters with wheelie suitcases: toasting each other’s honour in some of the world’s finest restaurants; propping up the bar in the early hours at five-star hotels; joshing in the hospitality boxes at the best matches; and snoring loudly in their first-class reclining seats on the flight home. For these grey-haired men, FIFA wasn’t just a gravy train, it was a truffle and saffron-infused express with gilded carriages. At least a dozen of them were already millionaires and rest were treated by FIFA as if they were. Bin Hammam knew well which members of the Exco old guard had taken bribes and got away with it. He was also close to the double act who were quietly fleecing FIFA for millions.

  When sitting down to plot his strategy, it was useful for Bin Hammam to think of his Exco colleagues in regional blocs, because that was how they often voted. It increased their bargaining power. The Exco were drawn from the four corners of the globe: seven from UEFA, the body which controls European football; three from South America’s Conmebol confederation; four from the Confederation of African Football (CAF); three from CONCACAF in central and northern America; one from Oceania which covers the Pacific islands and New Zealand; and four from the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), of which Bin Hammam was president; as well as one from the British home nations and Blatter himself. The cornerstone of his campaign would be to win over the Africans and shore up his support in Asia. That would give Qatar almost two thirds of the votes it needed.

  Asia should have been straightforward. Bin Hammam had plenty of leverage over the three other Exco members from the continent as the president of its confederation. There were, however, complications. Three other countries from the AFC were planning to enter the bidding race, and as their leader Bin Hammam owed them at least a semblance of impartiality. Australia, South Korea and Japan all wanted to throw their hats in the ring, so Bin Hammam couldn’t be seen to be backing Qatar’s bid at all costs at the expense of his other members. He was going to have to tread carefully. South Korea and Japan were represented by members of the Exco, and the very rules that Blatter had proposed to effectively disbar Europe and South America from the 2022 contest had stirred up their hopes. The two countries had jointly hosted a modestly successful World Cup in 2002 and their chances of being allowed to snatch the tournament back so soon were slim, but with the big guns out of the running they thought it was worth chancing their arm for 2022.

  The South Korean bid was a political ploy by Chung Mongjoon, who vied with Bin Hammam for the position of richest man on the FIFA Exco. He had been adopted into the family that owned the Hyundai Heavy Industries group, and now aged 57 he was the controlling shareholder of one of the biggest conglomerates in the world. Like Bin Hammam, Chung loved sport as much as business. He had been a champion equestrian in his youth and further distinguished himself as cross-country skier. He had become the head of his national football federation partly out of a passion for the game, but also because he saw it as a stepping stone for greater things: his country’s presidency. And the World Cup was to be the spring-board for his political ambitions. In the regional politics of the AFC, Chung was not a supporter of Bin Hammam. The two men were wary of each other and Bin Hammam had his work cut out if he was going persuade Chung to vote for Qatar as a second choice once South Korea dropped out of the contest in the initial rounds, as he intended to make sure it would.

  The softly spoken Junji Ogura of Japan was a little easier to deal with. His country had half-heartedly thrown in their hat for the 2022 competition alongside South Korea. Few understood why and, like South Korea, nobody expected them to win. Ogura, aged 70, was a quiet, respectful grandfatherly man with floppy white hair who adored football but was mo
re comfortable sizzling up tempura in his Tokyo home. He was one of the Exco who went to Zurich to nod through Blatter’s proposals. Ogura, surely, would do the decent thing once Japan was out of the race and vote for its Asian comrades in Qatar? So Bin Hammam’s strategy was to deftly tie his AFC ‘brothers’ into a pact. He needed to persuade Chung and Ogura that their three countries would vote for the last man standing – out of a regional patriotism. If Bin Hammam could find the votes, that would be Qatar.

  There was one Asian member left, Worawi Makudi from Thailand. Bin Hammam was all too familiar with the 57-year-old Makudi, whose reign in Bangkok had survived the ever-changing whims of his country’s many political regimes. He was primarily a football administrator but he used his position to create a number of lucrative business schemes in his homeland with the help of his sidekick and chief advisor at the Thai FA, Joe Sim, a gambling baron known to his friends as ‘The Casino King’. Makudi kept questionable company, and he was known in world football as ‘Mr Ten Percent’ – a reference to his personal entitlement for the television rights from some of the friendly matches played by Thailand’s national team. He was a close friend of Bin Hammam’s, certainly, but he always made sure he got his slice from any deal.

  In order to ensure Asia’s voters backed Qatar when their own countries were out of the running, Bin Hammam would also have to drum up a groundswell of support for his country’s bid across all the continent’s member associations who mandated their representatives on the Exco. That wasn’t a problem: Asia was his power-base, and he knew how to curry favour here. Many of the continent’s national football officials were already on his payroll. Sewing up Asia would still get Bin Hammam only four votes, however, including his own. He needed 13 to win. Where were the rest going to come from?

  Thousands of miles across the ocean were three of the FIFA Exco’s most entrenched members. The trio from South America came as a group and between them they had notched up more than 40 years on the executive committee. In any normal organisation with robust ethics, they would have been kicked out of their jobs several years ago, but this was FIFA and Blatter had come to rely upon them.

  For 19 years Ricardo Teixeira had been in charge of the football federation that had produced some of the greatest teams, Brazil. A combative, sturdy man with a shock of white hair now aged 61, he had married into the FIFA family years before when he took the hand of Lúcia Havelange, the daughter of Blatter’s predecessor. Under the tutelage of his father-in-law, Teixeira had become a multi-millionaire in a country where vast sections of the population live in shanty huts and child malnutrition is rife. Teixeira had been the subject of several investigations by the Brazilian authorities for creaming off a percentage of sponsorship contracts to his federation, but he had managed to survive. Even the country’s most adored footballer, Pelé, had accused him of corruption in a dispute over television rights. But there was one scandal that even he could not escape from: one of the darkest moments in FIFA’s history. It also implicated his fellow Exco member Nicolás Leoz, the president of Conmebol, the South American confederation.

  At the age of 80, Leoz, a former sports journalist, lawyer and history teacher, made even Blatter look like a sprightly young thing as he tottered into FIFA headquarters for Exco meetings. He had been making the same trip since 1998 and by now had the air of an aloof dictator with bulbous face and raised eyebrows that had fixed over the years into an expression of almost permanent disdain. He was comfortably wealthy from his years controlling football in South America, but he still craved recognition in his dotage. In his home country Paraguay, a football stadium and a beach boulevard had been named after him and his lackeys kept a book of his long list of titles. He collected honours like other people collected stamps. Like his close ally Teixeira, he had taken bribes and got away scot-free. In fact, even as the investigation into the kickbacks began, Leoz was awarded the FIFA Order of Merit for his leadership in football. Blatter knew how to keep the old man happy.

  The scandal that engulfed Leoz and Teixeira had followed the collapse of International Sport and Leisure (ISL), a sports marketing company that had been awarded contracts by FIFA in the 1990s to sell broadcast rights to the 2002 and 2006 World Cups. ISL had paid several hundred million dollars but had struggled to turn its contracts into profits and collapsed in 2001. A resulting investigation by Swiss prosecutors found that it had won the contracts by paying out more than $100 million in bribes and commission payments – many to FIFA officials – through front companies in Liechtenstein and elsewhere. Leoz had been paid a $130,000 kickback by ISL, but this was dwarfed by the cash paid out to Teixeira, who pocketed a staggering $13 million.

  The payments were sweeteners for the contracts which had been voted through by the FIFA Exco. However, thanks to Switzerland’s tenderness towards its associations, the acceptance of bribes like these was not considered an offence under the laws of the land and the two men were never prosecuted. It was not even a breach of FIFA’s own rules, because world football’s governing body didn’t have a code of ethics until three years after the fall of ISL.

  In any normal organisation Teixeira and Leoz would have been shown the door, but these men were key power-brokers and personal friends of the president. Blatter had knowledge of ISL’s dirty payments as early as 1997 when a $1 million payment slip had ended up in his Zurich office by mistake. The named payee had been none other than his own mentor, the then FIFA president Havelange. At the time, Blatter was just the secretary general and he simply passed the payment on to its intended recipient because, as he later tried to explain, he couldn’t understand why the money had been routed through FIFA. He didn’t think to ask why Havelange was receiving such a substantial sum from ISL. That was his story and he was sticking to it.

  The final member of the Latin triumvirate was Julio Grondona, from Argentina, who was virtually untouchable. He commanded FIFA’s finance committee and was therefore one of the handful of men in the world who knew how much Blatter earned. Grondona was the most senior of the vice-presidents on the Exco and was, in effect, Blatter’s number two. He founded Arsenal Fútbol Club, an Argentinian league side, in the 1950s, and rose through football administration before taking a seat at the executive committee in 1988. Now aged 76, he had a weak heart but that did little to subdue his sharp tongue. Grondona was a politically astute operator who played to the gallery in Buenos Aires by using every opportunity to display his hatred of the English over the ‘occupation’ of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands). They certainly wouldn’t be getting his vote and neither would the United States bid for 2022, because they were England’s stooges as far as Grondona was concerned. In any other organisation he would have been sacked for racist comments he had made years earlier. In 2003 he told a journalist: ‘I do not believe a Jew can ever be a referee at this level. It’s hard work and, you know, Jews don’t like hard work.’ He repeated his anti-Semitism later, saying: ‘Jews don’t like it when it gets rough.’ FIFA’s public stance had always been that it did not tolerate any form of racism, and yet Grondona’s jaw-dropping remarks passed unpunished in Zurich.

  For Bin Hammam, the South Americans were a challenge which would require all his skills of diplomacy and deal-making. These men were no push-over. What he did know, however, was that both Teixeira and Grondona had problems at home. Brazil was struggling to find the funds to update its stadiums for the 2014 World Cup and the Argentine football league was in a financially parlous state. Might this provide a way in?

  You would have to fly 5,000 miles from Buenos Aires to the pearl fishing island paradise of Tahiti in the middle of the South Pacific to find the next Exco member on Bin Hammam’s list. The lonely Oceania confederation had claim to just one seat on the Exco, and the current incumbent was the former French league football player Reynald Temarii. At meetings in the Zurich war room, the suave, bronzed Tahitian stood out from the rest of the Exco not least because there wasn’t a single grey hair on his head. At 41, he was the youngest member by near
ly a decade, having joined the world of high football politics just four years earlier. He may have worn a Hawaiian shirt on occasion, but Temarii was no buffoon. He had returned to Tahiti after finishing his playing career with FC Nantes and became first an advisor to the president, then a minister for youth sport and development. At FIFA he was one of the executive committee’s eight vice presidents and frequently rubbed shoulders with Bin Hammam as they both held senior positions on the body that doled out Goal Project cash. What Temarii needed more than anything was development money to improve the Pacific islands’ threadbare playing facilities.

  The Europeans were an entirely different proposition for Bin Hammam to ponder. Their federations were mostly rich and they didn’t vote as a pack as some of their colleagues around the world were apt to do. They would have to be dealt with one by one. There was a new rising star at the head of European football, and his name was Michel Platini. The Frenchman had enjoyed a stellar career as a footballer, with many rating him as one of the top ten players of the 20th century. He was the type of footballer every fan loved to watch: effortlessly agile with the ball at his feet and capable of conjuring a pass or a shot which was simply sublime. He was a lover of art, a bon viveur and perhaps surprisingly, for a man of such rich athletic talents, a smoker. He had played in Italy for one of the great Juventus teams and once wryly observed: ‘A Frenchman would drive two hundred kilometres for a good vineyard; an Italian would drive two hundred kilometres for a good game of football.’ Platini was undeniably in the French camp. After hanging up his boots in 1987, he managed the national team for four years before moving into football administration as an organiser for the 1998 World Cup in France and joined the Exco in 2002.