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

by Heidi Blake

  Paradise Island in the Bahamas is blessed with brilliant white sand beaches and pale turquoise water warmed by the tropical currents of the Gulf Stream. It is home to the dizzyingly glitzy Atlantis mega-resort, famed for its giant water park rides, buzzing casino scene, lively bars and array of celebrity chef restaurants. The island is linked by two bridges to the capital city of Nassau, with its gracious pink colonial buildings, fish shacks piled high with red snapper, and rum distilleries selling Bahama Mamas for $10 a pop. These streets were once stalked by pirates, looters, Spanish invaders and Prohibition rum-runners. So where better for FIFA’s motley crew to gather for their annual congress?

  When FIFA’s hundreds of officials came together at the Atlantis resort in June 2009, the bidding race for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups was well underway. The billionaire retail property tycoon and Australian FA chairman Frank Lowy had sailed his 74-metre superyacht to the Bahamas and moored it off Paradise Island, ready to host a succession of FIFA Exco members in the lap of luxury as he lobbied them to support his country’s 2022 bid. The leaders of England’s 2018 committee – its chairman, Lord Triesman, and the London Olympics chief Lord Coe who sat on its board – had also jetted in to Nassau to make their case.

  Bin Hammam flew into Nassau on his private jet accompanied by Mohammed Meshadi, ready to step up his campaign to cement the loyalty of his African brothers. He met a string of delegates in private on Paradise Island to discuss their financial needs. Seedy Kinteh from Gambia was naturally first in line. After the congress, he emailed Bin Hammam to remind him about what they had discussed. ‘I really need your brotherly help again as per discussed in Bahamas and i hereby provide you with the full bank details that you can use for any transfer,’ he wrote. ‘While i hope to here from you, please Sir do accept my very sportive regards and fraternal esteem always and my continuos prayers for your well being. Everyours Seedy M.B.Kinteh, PResident, Gambia Football Association.’

  The service was quick. Just ten days later, another email dropped into Bin Hammam’s inbox from Kinteh. ‘Many thanks indeed for your recent mail disclosing to me the transfer of $10,000 Dollars. I must first of all express my profound gratitude to you for this very wounderful brotherly gesture that you have once again demonstrated.’ Kinteh said he was sure the money would go a long way to developing the skills of Gambia’s players – despite the fact the payment had gone into his own bank account. He signed off: ‘On behalf of the entire Football family of the Gambia and indeed on my own humble behalf i wish you a continuos well being and good health as you continue to steer the affairs of your continent football. I have every reason to be grateful and indeed my President and Brother I AM!!!!’

  Manuel Dende, the president of the Sao Tome federation, also emailed Bin Hammam after meeting him in Nassau. Dende had visited Bin Hammam in Kuala Lumpur on one of those famous junkets the previous October, and he had been aboard the cruise ship in Putrajaya when the bagman Amadou Diallo had moved between the guests finding out how to make them happy. He knew how beneficent his new Qatari friend could be. So after a second meeting in Nassau, he asked for $232,000 to be paid into his personal bank account, apparently to build artificial football pitches in his country. Bin Hammam was nothing if not a generous man, but he considered such a large request from an official who was not even a member of the CAF executive committee a touch audacious. He decided to scale it back, faxing a copy of the email to Chirakal with the instruction: ‘Najeeb: I want to transfer $60,000 to this Federation.’ The money was not immediately forthcoming, and when Chirakal eventually emailed Dende in December with news his federation had been paid the lesser sum of $50,000, his response was curt. ‘Ok, tks,’ he replied.

  Liberia’s ‘Iron Lady’ Izetta Wesley was more easily gratified. She received $10,000 into her personal bank account after meeting Bin Hammam4 in Nassau in July and responded: ‘I’ve received the transfer. Please convey my thanks and appreciations to Mohammed. May the Almighty Allah replenish his resources a hundred fold. I am so happy that I have a brother and friend that I can always depend on.’ She had written to Bin Hammam before the congress in the Bahamas to report ‘a serious problem’. Her letter explained: ‘My league have started and I do not have any sponsors. Things are very difficult. Therefore, I have decided to send you a portion of my league budget for assistance.’ Her generous Qatari brother had smiled on her request, and she was eternally grateful.

  The Ivory Coast FA, home to the Exco voter Jacques Anouma, received $22,000 from one of Bin Hammam’s private slush funds at the start of July, earmarked as football aid,5 while the president of the Moroccan FA, Said Belkhayat, received a payment straight into his personal bank account.

  Bin Hammam was not the only Qatari on manoeuvres in Nassau. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Thani, the country’s FA president who had met Blatter in March when its formal bid was presented at FIFA headquarters, had arranged a private audience with the FIFA president. The Emir was determined to have a World Cup on his patch, but some of the naysaying about the improbability of cramming the entire tournament into his tiny country had evidently sunk in. He had decreed that overtures should be made to other Gulf states to mount a joint bid to host the tournament, and the FA president had been deputised to run the idea up the flagpole with Blatter. He had written to the FIFA president in May, and Blatter had responded warmly.

  ‘It is with great interest that I took note of your proposal to include neighbouring Gulf cities into your World Cup bid in order to share the vision of “Bringing the World Together” with several countries. I would be happy to discuss this matter further at the upcoming FIFA Congress in Nassau,’ he wrote.

  The plan to mount a joint Gulf bid did not go ahead because Qatar could not persuade its neighbours to sign up to take on the unlikely challenge. The other heads of state had told the Emir he was crazy even to consider a bid because they were bound to lose. But the meeting between Blatter and Sheikh Hamad was another opportunity to cement the ties between the FIFA president and the Qatar bid he had first encouraged over dinner with the Emir the previous year.

  Now that Bin Hammam had the enthusiastic support of the influential leaders of African football, it was time to kick off phase two of his campaign. He needed to begin making his approaches to the men who really mattered: the 24 voters on FIFA’s executive committee who would ultimately decide on the two hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups in a secret ballot in December 2010.

  In August, his aides began making arrangements for a visit from the only man at the helm of FIFA who really knew how it felt to win a World Cup. Franz Beckenbauer, the former German football superstar, was a highly influential figure on the executive committee and an international icon. He ranked among the greatest footballers of all time: one of only two men, along with Brazil’s Mário Zagallo, to have won the World Cup both as a player, in 1974, and as a manager, in 1990. Beckenbauer was football royalty. He cut such a starry figure that he was known at home as Der Kaiser – ‘The Emperor’. Selling the idea of a World Cup in the desert to a man of this stature was not, on the face of it, going to be an easy task. But Bin Hammam knew that Beckenbauer had a soft spot for Qatar that he could exploit.

  The Emperor of German football had added to his roll call of triumphs when he led his country’s successful bid to host the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Qatar had been a supporter of his campaign and, crucially, Bin Hammam had helped to round up the bloc of four Asian votes which propelled the German bid to victory. Now, he wanted a return on his investment.

  Bin Hammam had invited Beckenbauer to Doha to visit the Emir at the Diwan Palace, to remind him of his debt to Qatar. The German football legend would be accompanied by his close associate, Fedor Radmann, a roving sports consultant who had played a key role in the German World Cup campaign. Radmann was a schmoozer, a smooth-talker in four languages, a man who lurked in the fancy hotels where collars were loosened and gossip flowed freely. He was a lobbyist in the politics of world football, and there was always a heft
y fee for his ‘priceless’ knowledge and intelligence. Anyone who knew anything about the politics of the international game knew that if you wanted to get to Der Kaiser, then you went through Radmann. It was vital to get him on board.

  But there was a complication. Radmann’s exorbitant consultancy fees had already been paid by one of Qatar’s biggest rivals: the Australian bid. Its chairman, Frank Lowy, had hired the lobbyist and his business partner Andreas Abold to produce its official World Cup bid book at a princely cost of A$11.2 million. The arrangement had been negotiated by none other than Peter Hargitay, the Sepp Blatter confidant who had written to Bin Hammam the previous year scoffing at Qatar’s chances. England had sacked him early in its campaign but you couldn’t keep a man like Hargitay down and he was now being paid about $850,000 by the Australians for his wise counsel.

  Bin Hammam had a few things to straighten out in his own relationship with Australia before he got down to business. Until recently, the country’s football association had been part of the Oceania Confederation which loosely covered the far-flung islands in their corner of the Pacific. But under Lowy, who owns the Westfield shopping empire, they had developed major ambitions. They didn’t want their national side to be playing only New Zealand or whatever teams the South Pacific islands could muster in Oceania. They wanted proper competition, which is why they applied to become part of Bin Hammam’s Asian confederation.

  Bin Hammam had been delighted to help because Australia expanded his power base, and he did everything he could to make them welcome when they joined the Asian football family in 2006. In the process, he had become close to Lowy, and the two men had spent much time schmoozing in the garden hotels of Kuala Lumpur. They had a lot in common. Lowy, a Slovakian refugee then in his late seventies, was a truly self-made man, and Bin Hammam respected that. So when he declared he wanted to bring the World Cup to Australia, his new Qatari friend was initially supportive.

  Lowy announced his ambition before Bin Hammam knew that his own country was going to enter the running, and he had advised Lowy to hire the best team of lobbyists money could buy: Hargitay and his friends Abold and Radmann. Abold had been instrumental in securing the German World Cup alongside Beckenbauer and Radmann as the bid’s strategic consultant and he was a trusted member of Der Kaiser’s inner circle. If he and Radmann were on board, Beckenbauer’s vote would be in the bag, or so the reasoning went, and with such an influential backer on the Exco other votes would be sure to follow. Bin Hammam’s advice had not stopped there: he had also advised his Australian friends that the best way to win support for their World Cup bid was to target football officials across Africa and Asia to lay down a bedrock of support across two continents – just as he would later do for his own country.

  The whole business had become acutely embarrassing when Bin Hammam had realised his Emir wanted the World Cup too. There was no question as to where his loyalty must lie. Lowy had always told Bin Hammam that his country felt secure in bidding for the World Cup because they could rely on the AFC president’s support, but that was no longer the case. When the secret got out and Qatar’s intention to bid was becoming known, Bin Hammam had to come clean with Lowy and tell him that he would have to support his home country. The billionaire had been furious to lose Bin Hammam’s support, but he was still counting on Radmann and Abold to deliver Beckenbauer’s vote.

  Now, Bin Hammam wanted to interfere with that too. He might not be able to persuade Beckenbauer to vote for Qatar in the first round if Radmann and Abold were in the pay of Australia. But if Australia was knocked out in the early rounds, how would Beckenbauer vote then? If Bin Hammam and the Emir could remind Der Kaiser of the debt he owed them for their help in delivering the German World Cup, perhaps his vote could be won in the crucial later rounds which would ultimately decide the victor.

  So it was that Beckenbauer and Radmann touched down in Doha on a hot afternoon in late October 2009, and climbed into the air-conditioned limousine which took them to their suites in the five-star Sheraton Hotel on the Corniche. They were treated to all the finest hospitality Bin Hammam could offer and, first thing the next morning, they were driven with the Qatari football grandee a few hundred metres along the West Bay to the Diwan Palace to meet the Emir.

  The German football legend and his lobbyist would remember the visit for years to come, dining out on their surreal meeting with the ruler of the world’s richest country. Bin Hammam walked tall as he graciously ushered the two men through the grand marble corridors of the palace and into an anteroom outside the Emir’s private chamber. But when they were invited to enter, he dropped back. Sheikh Hamad was all charm in his gold-trimmed dishdasha when he greeted Beckenbauer and Radmann. But Bin Hammam seemed to cower in the corner, stooping with his neck bowed and his two hands clasped over the back of his head in reverence. The European visitors were nonplussed. This man was not just a leader of world football; he was a multi-billionaire, a captain of industry, and a royal counsellor. Why was he crouching in the corner like the lowliest serf? Beckenbauer and Radmann would tell their friends when they flew home that they had realised then more than ever before just how absolute was Sheikh Hamad’s power. Bin Hammam was entirely in his thrall. It was no wonder the other royal courtiers called him The Slave.

  The Emir duly reminded Beckenbauer of the support his country had given to the German 2006 World Cup campaign, and how Bin Hammam had helped secure the Exco votes he had needed to win. The conversation was awkward. Beckenbauer was a World Cup winner, and he knew what it took to play football at that level. He and Radmann tried to reason with the Emir. The heat was too severe, they told him. It just wasn’t possible to play football in those conditions. They respectfully urged him to think again. Why not have another go at the Olympics? But leave the World Cup alone. The Emir was implacable. He wanted the World Cup in Doha. Nothing else would do. And he expected Beckenbauer and Radmann to help him get it.

  So now Beckenbauer was in a quandary, and when he went back to Germany he talked anxiously to friends about his dilemma. Australia was expecting his vote and it would be bad form to back out of the assurances his associates had given to Lowy. But he was an honourable man, and the weight of the gratitude he owed to Qatar bore down heavily on his shoulders. Bringing the World Cup to Germany in 2006 had been one of the crowning glories of his career, and Bin Hammam had helped him by rounding up those crucial Asian votes. Could he turn his back on his friends in Doha after all they had done?

  Bin Hammam continued to invite a procession of key FIFA voters to enjoy his legendary hospitality in Doha as 2009 drew to a close, at the same time as getting to know the young men whom the Emir had put in charge of Qatar’s official bid committee. He invited the Spanish voter Ángel María Villar Llona to meet ‘Qatari higher ranking peoples’ in November, and the Brazilian voter Ricardo Teixeira was flown in on the Qatari’s private jet with his wife and daughter the same month. Teixeira dined privately with Bin Hammam on the evening of 13 November, and the whole family were taken to watch a friendly match played between Brazil and England in Doha’s 30°C November heat at the Khalifa International Stadium the following day. Bin Hammam’s aides emailed Teixeira’s full itinerary to Hassan Al-Thawadi, the new chief executive of the Qatar 2022 committee. It was important to let him know when a big fish was on the hook.

  While Bin Hammam attended discreetly to his friends inside FIFA, Al-Thawadi was assembling his team to mount Qatar’s official campaign. His new second in command was his surly older sibling, Ali Al-Thawadi, who was about as unlike his brother as it was possible to be. Where Hassan was tall, smart and slim, Ali was short, sluggish and round. Hassan was extensively travelled and most comfortable in a well-cut lounge suit, but his brother liked his home comforts in Doha and he favoured the traditional dishdasha over all that tight Western tailoring. He was gruff and charmless, lacking his younger brother’s polish, but he was loyal and Hassan looked after him. So Ali Al-Thawadi was brought in to be deputy chief executive of Qatar’s of
ficial bid committee. He was kept in the background, without appearing at the press conferences or in the official photographs of the bid team. Instead, he ambled along doing his younger brother’s bidding behind the scenes, and sometimes getting on with things the squeaky-clean public faces of the bid team didn’t want to think too much about.

  Ali Al-Thawadi had met Bin Hammam when he visited Kuala Lumpur as a ‘special guest’ of the AFC in September, accompanied by Khalid Al Kubaisi, the bid committee’s new director of finance, and Nasser Al-Khater, its slick new communications director. The relationship between the older Al-Thawadi brother and Bin Hammam was key, and it was important that the two men became well acquainted. Ali was to be the principal point of contact between the bid committee and Bin Hammam in the coming months, as Qatar’s man inside FIFA brought his African campaign to fruition. A plan had been hatched to host a third junket for Africa’s top football officials, in Doha rather than Kuala Lumpur, and this time the official Qatar bid committee would be picking up the bill. Perhaps that was one of the things Hassan would rather not know too much about, but Ali was there to take care of it.

  Ali was back at Bin Hammam’s side on 7 November and this time Hassan was there too when the brothers joined the AFC president at the Asian Champions League final in Tokyo. With them was Mohammed Awada, another conduit between the bid team and Bin Hammam. Awada had been the AFC president’s PR man until he went to work for the official Qatar bid committee as a back-room spin doctor. The two men remained close, so it was nice to be reunited in Tokyo, and catch up on the latest developments in promoting the country’s bid.

  Despite all the excitement of a tense match, in which South Korea’s Pohang Steelers beat the Saudi team Al-Ittihad 2-1, Ali and Bin Hammam had other things to discuss. They were busy planning their Doha junket for the African officials. The day after the final, the bid’s deputy chief executive emailed Najeeb Chirakal in the Qatari billionaire’s private office asking him to provide daily updates on which CAF officials had accepted the invitation.