From Summer to Winter, and World Cup Compensation

By Max Grieve

Among the first to qualify for the next World Cup and, on current form, likely to be among the first knocked out in Brazil, doing something before others is becoming something of a theme for Australia, if you can play along with the opening and ignore all the things in which Australia isn’t first.

Australia spent a lot of money a few years ago on a book, a badly animated kangaroo, and Elle Macpherson, which was meant to win them the rights to hold the 2022 World Cup in the Australia winter. Thanks to the rugby union, league, and Aussie rules football seasons all taking place during this time, the Football Federation of Australia (FFA) had to negotiate with the various codes over stadium use, and planned the construction of three new stadiums. There was a launch at Parliament House, and then an excruciating presentation in Zurich in which the badly animated kangaroo was shown to the rest of the world.

The Australian bid received one vote. Given Australia’s track record with hosting major international sporting events, this seemed a little strange. Given we’d spent $43m on it, the whole thing seemed a little pointless. And so it was that Qatar was chosen to host the World Cup in June or July of 2022.

Everyone’s aware that FIFA are seriously considering changing the 2022 World Cup from the Qatari summer to the winter because everything would melt if football was played at that time of year – that’s not anything new. What is new is that Australia is asking Fifa to give them back the money they spent on a bid for a World Cup in June or July, which comes across as only fair. The A-League season is played over the Australian summer because the stadiums aren’t available during the winter, so a World Cup played over December or January would have been ideal, and a little less hot than Doha.

The FFA say FIFA need to consider “an in-principle decision that just and fair compensation should be paid to those nations that invested many millions, and national prestige, in bidding for a summer event”.

Australia isn’t complaining about having not won in its bid to host the 2022 World Cup – we’ve already done that. Said FFA chairman Frank Lowy, “Since December 2010 Australia has been careful not to let its misgivings about the process be interpreted as sour grapes. But now, with increasing speculation about a change that will impact on us as one of the bidding nations, and because our competition will be affected, we have made our position public.”

$43m is an awful lot to spend on something that was never really there to begin with. If FIFA persist with the idea of a northern winter World Cup, it can’t be long until South Korea, Japan and the US ask for their own compensation, too.