If you are still smarting over that word ‘Qatar’ from last week, you might want to check out SBS’ World Game tonight.
In an exclusive interview Australia’s 2022 FIFA World Cup bid consultant Peter Hargitay claims Australia was lied to by members of the FIFA Executive Committee.
Speaking one-on-one with Les Murray, Hargitay says Australia was promised six votes by the FIFA Executive Committee, yet walked away with just one.
“Before we went into the voting, we had six votes that we were assured of,” says Hargitay. “We needed at least five to survive the first round. We always knew that the first round was going to be the crucial round. Of the six votes, we had one left and that one vote was claimed by two people, so you tell me what is honesty.”
When asked why he thought members of the committee would vote for Qatar instead of Australia, Hargitay was frank.
“You go figure it out. What do you think? What do you think motivates people, 14 of them, to vote for a country the population of Zurich, to vote for a country that is the size of Fiji, to vote for a country where the infrastructure to play host to millions of fans still has to be created… You go figure, how can 14 men make that decision?”
“The most fundamental mistake we (Australia) made, and there can be no other way, is that we played it clean,” said Hargitay.
Les Murray will be joined by Craig Foster and Francis Awaritefe for full analysis of the 2022 World Cup decision on The World Game tonight.
The full interview will air tonight on The World Game, 9:30pm on SBS TWO with a replay at 11:30pm on SBS ONE.
The extended interview will also be available online at www.sbs.com.au/theworldgame after tonight’s show.
Lucky we lost it.
Cut our loses at 45 mill instead of the hundreds they would have wasted.
Agree the promo video was a promo for Australia, not for soccer in Australia. I guess we didn’t pay enough bribe money. The A$45m was spent how?
Its more like sour grapes from SBS to me, esp with Fozzie who wanted the Socceroos of 74 in it and Johnny Warren which no one is FIFA would have heard of those guys.
It was funny to watch with the consultant explaining the process which was pure speculation to justify his pricetag. I still don’t understand what he was paid to do as a consultant. Honestly, trying to justify the meetings that he organised etc. Of course the FIFA members will be polite and say we will vote for you, they aren’t going to say to FFA you have a crap bid and I won’t vote for you.
I watched that interview last night on the world game and i was not serprised i agreed with everything Peter Hargitay said. Australia never stood a chance of winning, the presentation lacked football personalities and what the event would do for football in this country. If it was a ad campaign for Australia which it was then it wasnt bad bud a bid video for FIFA well that wasnt good enough. I agree that there is something rotten in FIFA but like Francis Awaratefe said last night on the World Game, FIFA have been caring this process out for years. We should have known better. But moving on and i forecast empty stadiums and no atmosphere and some elite footballing nations actually delibretaly triying not to quality for that years tournament. That will show FIFA the error of their ways but again like Peter Hargitay said the current FIFA executive commite will not be their they will most likely be dead by 2022.
While I’m disappointed Australia did not win the right to hold the tournament in 2022, I am really over this constant whingeing about being hard done by, etc….
I think in reality we would have struggled to stage such a tournament anyway with half the stadiums proposed having seating far away from the pitch [as they are for AFL] and the fact that we are really not in an EU friendly time zone.
If anyone should feel ripped off, it is the USA – they had the safest and best bid by far with the best facilities of all
Oh yeah – and England should have won 2018
@Phoenix727 – well said. The kangaroo and our timezone have nothing to do with our not getting the votes. It’s all about bags of cash, or o/seas trips, or anything else the delegates desired.
However, I will say that Qatar’s bid indicates that they will be constructing enclosed airconditioned stadia, so the oppressive heat shouldn’t be an issue once you’re inside. The fact that they also said that they will be donating these stadia to other countries afterwards prob also played in their favour (tho’ not as much as the $).
The thing I liked most out of the whole thing was the bid video with the animated Kangaroo. Would love to see more of her. Make it into a cartoon series like they did with Blinky Bill, Skippy (yes Skippy existed as a cartoon series as well) or the Kangaroo Creek Gang.
FFS get over it… We were never front runners and it’s not a bad thing if the game wants to grow itself in markets where it sees better opportunities.
Parochialism is cute only to a point….
I think everyone involved needs to shut the hell up about it. We lost – get over it.
From everyone else’s point of view we are just a bunch of whinging sore losers.
F em
Qatar is considered a swear word here now.
During the boradcast of the FIFA announcement on Fox News, they said that Al Jazeera had reported Qatar as the winner for 2022 before the announcement was even made. Tell me that’s not dodgy!
Why is anyone surprised- it’s soccer we’re talking about.
Nice pic! Hot Arab holding large gold phallic thing.
FIFA lied to bidders? Surely not!!!
I was lucky enough to watch most of the World Cup bid on ABC News 24 before they started covering the bid, to say that our loss was down to a CGI Kangaroo was ridiculous. Overall our bid was strong, we had strong representatives and the other video’s shown were wonderfully vidid and showed our passion for sport and the strong culture of Australia.
I agree with one of the Drum contributors, all the other bids showed their passion for Soccer rather than sport in general, that’s where we needed to focus our energy. We should go again, we have to. The argument that its in a inconvienant time zone is nuts, we did the Olympics, we do F1 here every year, Indy Cars come here, Red Bull Air Racing, Rugby world cup. I’m not saying its easy but we get it done.
I should also mention I suspect there were a few dollars floating around this bid, everyone has a price, especially FIFA Excutive committee members.
the people responsabile for that ad should be shot what a bloody waste if money the fake kangaroo is embarrasing
sadly we never stood a chance and should never have wasted 45 million to put together a bid
I think all 22 FIFA members should go to the Middle East in June/July and forced to run for 90 minutes straight. I’m sure they would be reconsidering their choice after that. Even at nighttime, the air is so think, no wind meaning there is no releif from day or night.
Whoa. This’ll be one to watch.
I saw their bid video, they are lucky they got one vote.
Duh, of course FIFA lied to Australia, 3 days later and I still cant get over the fact that Qatar won for 2022.