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

by Heidi Blake

  It was a charmed life which just kept on getting better. By 2008 he had served as the president of UEFA for a year, after pulling off an improbable and narrow victory against the 16-year incumbent Lennart Johansson – largely due to the efforts of his new patron, Sepp Blatter. He did it with typical aplomb, announcing to an assembled crowd of voters: ‘My hair is gone; I’ve got a big belly; it’s time to be president.’ Platini seemed unstoppable and a clear candidate for the ultimate job, the FIFA presidency. So where would that leave the Qatar bid? Platini was not the sort of man who would want see his cherished game played in 40-degree heat. But he was known to be close to the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who had made it clear he was open to forging alliances with oil-rich Qatar. Bin Hammam might have found his pressure-point.

  The other big name from Europe was an equally tough nut to crack, Franz Beckenbauer. The former German footballer would also feature on most people’s top ten list of the great players of the last century. While Platini never made it to a World Cup final, Beckenbauer had won the competition as both a player and a manager. His achievements were without parallel. In his playing days he controlled games by sweeping behind the defence, organising those around him and reading the play intuitively. Upright and elegant, he would choose his moment to stride up the pitch in a manner that suggested he knew he was in charge. The Germans called him ‘Der Kaiser’ and he had retained his unshakeable self-confidence when he entered management with his national team, and later Bayern Munich.

  Beckenbauer was better placed than most to understand the nature of an Exco World Cup vote because he had seen it at first hand when he led his nation’s bid for the 2006 competition. It was a highly controversial ballot swung by a typical piece of Blatter chicanery. The president had promised the Africans that the World Cup would come to their continent when he was first campaigning to lead FIFA in 1998. It was one of his tactics to win the continent’s support, and he therefore publicly supported the South African bid against Beckenbauer’s Germany. However, when it came to the secret ballot for the 2006 World Cup hosts at Zurich in July 2000, Blatter was said to have reneged on his promise. Michel Zen-Ruffinen – the FIFA secretary general who turned on Blatter in 2002 – had collected the votes from each member and later revealed that the president had actually put his tick against the name of Germany, not South Africa. Zen-Ruffinen reasoned that this was because FIFA was already wedded to a financially uncertain World Cup in Japan and South Korea in 2002 and Blatter did not want this to be followed by another high-risk tournament in Africa – despite his pledges during his election campaign.

  The vote on the 2006 tournament was closer than anyone could have imagined. Going into the final round, South Africa and Germany were tied at 11 votes each, and England was about to drop out as its support had been cut to two. Then a curious thing happened. Charlie Dempsey, the Exco member from New Zealand, went awol. He had been mandated by his federation to vote for South Africa and did so in the opening two rounds. Then in the final round he had a sudden change of heart and abstained. Germany won 12 votes to 11, and best of all they had done so in a manner which meant that Blatter would not have to reveal his hand by using his casting presidential vote. Quite what caused Dempsey’s 11th-hour capitulation has never been discovered, but he was forced to resign by his Oceania committee two days later. The sorry saga did, however, present Bin Hammam with an opportunity. Qatar had given its backing to the German World Cup bid over South Africa and Bin Hammam, ever the dealmaker, had played a crucial role in rounding up the Asian votes Beckenbauer needed to win the ballot. The Germans owed Qatar a debt of gratitude and it was time to call in the favour.

  Four of the other European members of the Exco were representing countries which were in the running for the 2018 competition. Although it was against the rules, Bin Hammam could offer his vote to them if they agreed to back Qatar for 2022. England were pushing hard for 2018 after losing out on the 2006 World Cup and they were well equipped in stadiums and infrastructure to host the tournament. But they were not popular among the Exco. They clung to the arrogant belief that England was superior as the home of football and they were loathed by grandees such as Grondona.

  They also had a fundamental weakness: their own Exco member (who joined the committee as one of the British home nations, rather than as a member of UEFA), Geoff Thompson, was only half-heartedly promoting their bid. Thompson, aged 63, was as straight as they come: he had been a referee and now worked part-time as a magistrate. He shunned the limelight, preferring the peace and quiet of his Chesterfield home. Behind his back, the England bid called him ‘the blazer’ and were never quite sure if even they could count on his vote because he seemed so diffident. He had gone from slicing the half-time oranges for his village team to running the Sheffield and Hallamshire FA in the 1960s. Following a spell as general manager at Doncaster Rovers, he climbed his way up the English FA to become its chairman in 1999. Thompson, however, stood down from this role in early 2008 to make way for a favourite of the Labour government, the former minister Lord Triesman. It left him freer to concentrate on his roles at UEFA and of course the Exco, which he had joined two years previously. Thompson presented Bin Hammam with a problem: he was a stickler for the rules, and wouldn’t England be more inclined to vote for their big ally, the USA?

  Perhaps he had to look to Spain, where a football revolution was taking place thanks to the foresight of the urbane Exco member Ángel María Villar Llona. As head of the country’s association, Villar Llona had put in place a youth training system decades earlier which was now bearing fruit. Only that summer Bin Hammam had been present at the Ernst-Happel-Stadion in Vienna to watch Villar Llona spring to his feet as Fernando Torres scored the winning goal for Spain against Germany in the final of the 2008 European Football Championship. It was a rebirth for a country of perennial footballing underachievers who could now pass their way through all before them thanks to the array of young talent which had matured together into an outstanding team.

  Villar Llona, aged 58, had been an accomplished midfielder himself, representing his country on 22 occasions. He studied law after leaving football and was celebrating his 20th anniversary as the head of the Spanish FA. The handsome Spaniard was now fronting his country’s World Cup hopes and was negotiating with Portugal to agree a joint Iberian bid which would be culturally and linguistically attractive to the three South American voters. If Villar Llona could pull that off, he would have four votes at his disposal. Of all the European contenders, he had to be the prime target for any vote-swapping deal.

  The chubby Belgian doctor Michel D’Hooghe offered an alternative if he could be persuaded that the temperatures in Qatar were not too threatening to players’ health. D’Hooghe’s home country had made a partnership with Holland and was styling itself as the green bid for the 2018 World Cup – which was slightly misplaced as hardly anyone on the FIFA Exco gave a hoot about environmental issues. Bid teams on bicycles were not going to cut much ice with men more used to chauffeur-driven limousines. The Low Countries bid was unloved and needed votes. Even D’Hooghe would stay at a distance from his nation’s well-meaning campaign. While Villar Llona led the Spanish bid from the front, D’Hooghe made it clear he supported his country, but did not get involved.

  The jovial 62-year-old loved nothing better than to don his short-brimmed Belgian hat and entertain friends with his accordion. He had become smitten with football as a child when he first walked on to the grass of the Klokke Stadion in his home city of Bruges dressed as a smiling bear mascot in blue and black football kit. After medical school, he was appointed the club’s first doctor – a job that launched him on an illustrious career in sports medicine as, among other things, an expert in groin strain. At the same time he took charge of the Belgian FA, and for the last 20 years he had been a fixture on the Exco. As the FIFA medical expert, he understood better than anyone else how extreme heat sapped the performance of elite athletes. Bin Hammam scrawled a question mark against his nam
e.

  Russia was a dark horse. Sport had been an instrument for bringing prestige to the state since the days of communism, but prime minister Vladimir Putin was not a football fan. The country’s football chiefs were planning to bid for the 2018 World Cup, but would its leader throw his weight behind their efforts and give them the backing of a state apparatus which had tentacles all over the world?

  In 2008, Russia’s FIFA Exco member was Vyacheslav Koloskov, a long-standing sports functionary who cut deals on the Exco based on national interest, but the leadership of the bid had been handed to Vitaly Mutko, one of Putin’s cronies from his days as mayor of Saint Petersburg. It was rumoured that Mutko would take Koloskov’s seat on the Exco and that might be a signal of Putin’s intent. Qatar and Russia could not have been more different in size and yet they had certain things in common. Both were autocracies with strong rulers whose positions were cemented by an accident of geology which made them the world’s biggest exporters of liquefied natural gas. To secure the vote of the Russian Exco member, whoever it might be, Bin Hammam would have to persuade Putin to back Qatar, and perhaps his country’s shared gas interests might be a way of getting his foot inside the door of the Kremlin.

  The other UEFA Exco members were Marios Lefkaritis from Cyprus and Şenes Erzik from Turkey. The Cypriot entrepreneur Lefkaritis was an unknown quantity when it came to the World Cup vote. He had been a reliable stalwart on UEFA committees for many years, but at the age of 62 was only just getting accustomed to the machinations of the FIFA Exco following his election the year before. He had been born in the port of Limassol, Cyprus’s second biggest city, and had made a fortune through the oil industry. His family’s company, Petrolina, owned dozens of petrol stations all over Cyprus and supplied fuel to the shipping and aviation industries, with subsidiary firms owning land and property developments across the island. Bin Hammam could not predict how amenable Lefkaritis would be to a back-room deal before the World Cup ballot, but one thing was for sure: when it came to oil and property, he knew how to do business.

  Erzik, aged 66, was a multilingual economics graduate who had worked in the pharmaceutical industry and the United Nations before being hired by the Turkish FA. From his office among the minarets of Istanbul, he used his marketing expertise to transform Turkish football and was awarded posts with UEFA in 1994 and then the FIFA Exco two years later. At the time Turkey was the only Muslim country with a representative on the Exco besides Qatar. It was something Bin Hammam could build on.

  And then there was the little and large partnership that had been quietly skimming the cream off the FIFA coffers for years: Jack Warner, the president of CONCACAF, and his gargantuan secretary general, Chuck Blazer. CONCACAF had three seats on the Exco, and in any normal ballot you would have expected the trio to pledge their support to the USA, their confederation’s only candidate for the 2022 World Cup. But the small group of men was led by Warner, and that meant anything was possible.

  The former history teacher from Trinidad and Tobago was already one of the most notorious figures in Blatter’s ‘FIFA family’. He wielded disproportionate power as president of CONCACAF, presiding over an organisation that had a fifth of all votes at the FIFA congress. Warner’s fiefdom included three countries from North America and seven from Central America, but his strength lay in the 31 Caribbean islands which each had a football federation no matter how small they happened to be. The great footballing nations, such as Brazil (population 200 million) and Germany (80 million), each had one vote at FIFA congress. So did tiny Montserrat with a population of just 5,000 people which formed part of Warner’s empire. The joke was that every time a tiny atoll pierced the warm blue-green waters of the Caribbean, Warner would give it a football federation.

  Warner was a natty figure in a shiny suit with short lapels. He was quick to grin and crack a joke and played the part of the lovable rogue to perfection. But beneath all the zap and charisma, this was a rapacious opportunist who would bully and browbeat friends and enemies alike in order to get what he wanted. Warner had several money-making schemes, but the most lucrative was the cash he was looting from FIFA using his pet project, the Dr João Havelange Centre of Excellence.

  The centre, on the outskirts of Warner’s home city of Port of Spain, had lofty ambitions. It was, according to its website, a ‘hub of football education, expertise and skills training, catering to the needs of players, both club and national teams, sports officials, referees and other stakeholders, with a mission to achieve a sustained level of excellence in every aspect of the game’. It was also open for weddings, birthdays, rock concerts and Miss Universe contests, in fact, anything that generated cash.

  Over the years Warner repeatedly bombarded FIFA with requests for money to develop the centre. FIFA duly obliged, pumping millions into Warner’s scheme almost every time he asked. His secret, which he never let on, was that he owned the land the centre was built on, and the CONCACAF bank accounts FIFA were regularly filling were also under his complete control. FIFA never enquired about what happened to the money. The votes Warner controlled at congress were too important. Instead, Blatter tried to keep his Caribbean friend happy, offering patronage in the form of membership of various FIFA committees to 72 officials from Warner’s confederation.

  Warner’s co-conspirator was one of the most conspicuous people on the FIFA Exco. His American comrade, Blazer, was as wide as he was tall. With his perfect rotundity and curly white beard, CONCACAF’s secretary general had all the appearance of a cash-crazed Father Christmas. He ran the confederation’s operations from a grace-and-favour penthouse in Trump Tower: one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in New York, with prized views over Central Park. Blazer was highly intelligent, but also eccentric. Joggers would turn their heads to watch this man-mountain taking his daily ‘exercise’ around Central Park on a Segway with a parrot on his shoulder. Even stranger was the fact that the parrot had been trained by Blazer’s ex-wife to hurl abuse at him in her own voice. Mrs Blazer had taken temporary custody of the bird after the pair had separated, and spent a year training it to spit out choice insults which she felt summed up her ex-husband’s many defects before sending it back to give him a piece of her mind. Blazer was still fond of his parrot which he kept in a giant gold aviary in his penthouse office, but he wished it would stop squawking ‘You’re a dope’ at him during business meetings.

  Warner and Blazer came together as a partnership in 1990 when the Trinidadian made an audacious challenge for the presidency of CONCACAF. Warner won against the odds thanks to the support of Blazer, who was an official in the United States soccer federation at the time. Shortly afterwards, Warner made Blazer CONCACAF’s secretary general and the pair set about making money. In the ten years before 2008, Blazer misappropriated many millions of dollars from CONCACAF in unauthorised commissions, fees and rent expenses for his apartments in Trump Towers and Miami. Even his giant Hummer was fully paid for by the football organisation.3

  In the contest for the 2006 World Cup, Warner and Blazer, along with the third CONCACAF member of the Exco, had initially backed England. They soon proved inconsistent. After voting for England in the first round, they switched their support to South Africa, effectively ending the English bid’s chances. Since then, a new third member had joined the Exco. Rafael Salguero Sandoval, a 62-year-old former football player turned solicitor from Guatemala, was a vice chairman of CONCACAF and had been on its executive committee for 22 years. Salguero had been unaware of the huge amounts of money being siphoned off by Warner and Blazer. Bin Hammam was not sure how this new third member would vote, but the way into CONCACAF was undoubtedly through Warner.

  The man from the Caribbean was key, and thankfully he described Bin Hammam as ‘my only brother in football’. The Qatari was already working hard on locking down Warner’s support. A couple of weeks earlier in May 2008, he had emailed his staff at the AFC to ask for Warner’s bank account details so he could wire over $250,000 – a sum 25 times the ave
rage wage in Trinidad and Tobago at that time. Days earlier, just ahead of the Sydney congress, Warner had been taken to China on Bin Hammam’s private jet in his role as the Qatari’s ‘consultant’ on a project to raise the standards of football across Asia. The men were touring Beijing when a massive earthquake hit the Sichuan region, hundreds of miles away. Warner would later claim that the cash from Bin Hammam was to recompense him for ‘losses’ he had suffered during the natural disaster. He never explained quite what he was carrying in his luggage that could possibly have been worth such a huge round-figure sum – unless, of course, it was a suitcase full of cash.

  Last but a very long way from least, there was Africa, Bin Hammam’s political heartland. The continent he had learned to navigate extremely well on the campaign trail for Sepp Blatter. Here, he would have to build bridges with Issa Hayatou, the man he had helped trounce in the FIFA presidential elections six years earlier. For 20 years the French-speaking Hayatou had been the dominant force in African football as the president of CAF, and had served on the Exco for longer than Bin Hammam. He cut an imposing figure in his flowing white boubou – an impression accentuated by his oke headdress which made him look even taller than his 6ft 5in frame. His vote would come with conditions. He would want to know what Qatar could do for Africa and his home country Cameroon. But Hayatou was not unassailable. Bin Hammam, alongside Blatter, had ruthlessly cut his support in half in 2002 and could do so again. If he wanted to stay at the helm of African football, it might be easier for Hayatou to go with the flow this time, especially if his country and his continent stood to benefit.