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Blazer Explains World Cup Vote...

By Martyn Ziegler, Chief Reporter, Press Association Sport

FIFA's American member Chuck Blazer has said he voted for Russia over England for the 2018 World Cup because it will open up new markets for football.

Blazer said England would have staged a "great World Cup" but that it would have contributed little to the game's development globally. He also insisted that he believes the 2018 decision had been a fair vote.

He said: "I went to visit Russia and England and Holland/Belgium to look at their bids and they all behaved perfectly correctly. Nothing has changed since then."

His final decision came down to the legacy of the World Cup - and he was influenced by the tournament's success in South Africa earlier this year.

"I voted for Russia," Blazer told Soccer America. "England clearly had a great bid. But in the end, I look at England and say, 'What more would we have when we're finished other than what I am certain would have been a great World Cup?'

"I believe that when we're finished in Russia, we'll have accomplished a lot of different things. We can open up a market that is important from a world perspective.

"Everyone came away saying, 'Wow, what a great World Cup in South Africa.'

"It was a hard process to get there, but nonetheless the event was very, very successful from a TV, marketing, worldwide perspective.

"And having done it there, it gave reason for everyone in the world to say, 'We can do it here.' No longer was it reserved for only for the big countries in Europe and the Americas."

He added: "If you look you at the votes - one for Australia, two for England, three for the USA in the first round, a total of six votes out of a potential of 44 votes - there didn't seem much of a taste for these places."

The irony for Blazer was the same argument that did for England may have lost the USA's bid for 2022 to Qatar - but he continues to insist the Middle Eastern state will struggle to deal with the problem of 50 degree C temperatures in June and July.

"I still feel heat is an obstacle that they won't overcome in the time frame in which we hope it will," he added.

"Who knows? By then, we may be going around with air-conditioned suits."

Blazer acknowledged that the sums spent by Qatar on their bid - running into hundreds of millions of pounds - raised questions about the process.

"Qatar took it all to another level," he said. "The question really comes down to, how do you create a level playing field for bidders going forward."

Blazer believes Qatar's bid president Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani was able to announce their victory on Al-Jazeera television half-an-hour before FIFA president Sepp Blatter opened the envelope because they were so sure of their votes - they won by 14 to 8 in the final round.

"This was a very well-managed campaign," Blazer said.

My commentary on the World Cup decisions...

This story is reprinted from Soccer America and written by Paul Kennedy who interviewed me by phone yesterday.

Chuck Blazer on the U.S. loss
by Paul Kennedy, December 10th, 2010 2:16AM

[WORLD CUP 2022] A week after the vote by the FIFA executive committee to give the 2022 World Cup to Qatar over the United States and three other bidders, Chuck Blazer, the lone American on the executive committee that selected the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, finds himself in the Gulf. Blazer is the chairman of the FIFA organizing committee for the 2010 Club World Cup being played in Abu Dhabi. He spoke at length with Soccer America about what we can learn from the outcome ...

"It was disappointing because I know how hard people had worked, including myself, to bring home a result," Blazer says. "And when you realize in the end it didn't have much of a chance because it had little to do with what we were saying and more on how things are in the world, it's kind of a hard thing to reconcile."

Blazer, a member of the FIFA executive committee since 1996 and general secretary of New York-based Concacaf, says the turning point in both the 2018 and 2022 races was not anything any of the bidders did but what happened in South Africa this summer.

"In the simplest form," he says, "we were very successful in South Africa. It was successful in a place where even though we went there we weren't that certain we'd be successful. The event went very well. The stadiums were finished in the end. All the things that needed to get done finally got done. It was a hard process to get there, but nonetheless the event was very, very successful from a TV, marketing, worldwide perspective. Everyone came away from it saying, 'Wow, what a great World Cup in South Africa.' And having done it there, it gave reason for everyone in the world to say, 'We can do it here.' No longer was it reserved for only for the big countries in Europe and the Americas."

It changed the dynamics of both races, the favorites for which a year ago would have been the USA and England.

"Look, I voted for Russia," says Blazer, whose travel blog features a story on his summer meeting with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last summer as well as photos of Putin's vacation. "England clearly had a great bid. But in the end, I look at England and say, 'What more would we have when we're finished than what I am certain would have been a great World Cup?' I believe that when we're finished in Russia, we'll have accomplished a lot of different things."

Blazer says the World Cup is an opportunity for massive investment in sports facilities, infrastructure, hotels and the like, but at least just an important, an opportunity to broaden relations -- political, social and cultural -- between Russia and the West.

"We can open up a market that is important from a world perspective," he says.

Qatar -- the first World Cup in the Middle East, the first World Cup hosted by a Muslim country -- offers many of the same opportunities.

Blazer doesn't want to take anything away from the Qatar victory. "They ran a very, very good campaign," he says. "Eleven [executive committee members] voted for them in the first round." But he feels there were too many obstacles with Qatar despite the tremendous amount of investment they were making.

"I still feel heat is an obstacle that they won't overcome in the time frame in which we hope it will," he says.

With average temperatures of 107 degrees in the summer, Qatar 2022 has proposed air-conditioning stadiums and other World Cup-related facilities, but it produced one of the memorable lines of the bid campaign, Blazer's remark to the Wall Street Journal in mid-November: "You can air-condition a stadium, but I don't see how you can air-condition an entire country."

(Since the Dec. 2 announcement, discussion of moving the 2022 World Cup from the summer to the winter has picked up steam. On Thursday, Peter Velappan, the former general secretary of the Asian Football Confederation said air conditioners were "not a solution" and posed the possibility of a European boycott. "Qatar is a nice country," Velappan said, "but there is no way football can be played in June and July there. No player will ever want to play in these conditions.")

Blazer doesn't know the answer. "Who knows? By then, we may be going around with air-conditioned suits."

The virtue of a U.S. World Cup bid was that it offered huge revenues that could essentially be guaranteed for FIFA, whose other soccer tournaments, grants to confederations and member associations and development programs are all subsidized by the World Cup. After South Africa, Brazil 2014 offers more uncertainty.

"It would have been nice," Blazer says, "to find solutions, whether it was England or the U.S. in that mix, where it would not have an issue with the incomes."

But it wasn't meant to be.

"If you look you at the votes -- one for Australia, two for England, three for the USA in the first round, a total of six votes out of a potential of 44 votes -- there didn't seem much of a taste for these places," says Blazer.

One factor that worked against the United States, whose bid was funded by U.S. Soccer and sponsors, was the extremes to which other bidders -- namely, the two winners -- generated the backing of their governments.

"There is no way that Russia could have conceived of bidding for the World Cup without the level of absolute commitment of the government, which they showed with a very forthright plan that had the support from the top levels of the government," says Blazer. "Certainly, Qatar took it all to another level. The question really comes down to, how do you create a level playing field for bidders going forward."

World Cup bidding campaigns were modest contests until the mid-1990s when South Korea mounted a remarkable campaign -- backed by the giants of Korean industry -- to overtake rival Japan and force a compromise that resulted in the first and only co-hosted World Cup, in 2002. But there has never been a campaign like the one of Qatar, the first one in which sovereign wealth was used -- to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

"We've never had this problem up until now," says Blazer.

The other factor that worked against the United States is its standing in the world.

"I think our image has changed in the last decade," Blazer says. "It impacts us as well. Clearly, our image is different, and in dealing with members of the executive committee over the last decade, there has been a change in the nature of how we are perceived."

Blazer credited the USA Bid Committee with making a strong bid in the face of the excesses of the winning Qatari bid. "You have to give a tremendous amount of credit to [U.S. Soccer President and bid chairman] Sunil [Gulati] and his group for doing things the right way."

Still, as he left the meeting room in Zurich where the executive committee voted on the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Blazer says he thought a U.S. victory was possible. He says it wasn't until FIFA President Sepp Blatter pulled the name of Russia out of the envelope with the 2018 winner that he figured Qatar had won the 2022 race.

How Qatar 2022 bid president Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al-Thani knew to announce the Qatar victory at least a half an hour earlier on Al-Jazeera remains a mystery, the explanation to which Blazer puts down to how Mohamed Bid Hammam, the Qatari member of the executive committee, managed to count his votes.

"This was a very well managed campaign," says Blazer.

And at 14-8, a very comfortable victory.

FCWC Press Conference...

FCWC Organizing Committee Meeting...

Elaine...

Friday, December 3rd, JFK Airport, NYC

As the wheels of our Swiss International Airbus Jet was touching down at JFK from Zurich and the disappointing decision on the World Cup 2022, the spirit of Elaine Kaufman was lifting off for her flight to heaven. There was hardly a celebration that didn't involve her. There was hardly a week that didn't include her. There was hardly a friend who wasn't welcomed by her. There was hardly a night that she didn't anchor my safe harbor. There will hardly be a day when I won't think of her.


My Birthday at Elaine's

At lunch on her birthday at Barney Greengrass with Mary Lynn and Danny Zarem

With Miss Universe 2008 Dayana Mendoza

Saturday Holiday Shopping...

My Blog gets a name change...

On August 5th, I had the pleasure of visiting with the Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, in his private office in the Russian Federation Office Building. It was a very busy day in the nation's capital, with the Prime Minister's itinerary changed, keeping him grounded to his office, due to the rash of forest fires sweeping the Moscow region. That morning I received a call inviting me to come to the House of the Russian Government and have a chat.

Primed and ready for the opportunity, I arrived on time and was brought to a room where I met the very skilled translator who was specialized in simultaneous translation; not with headphones and equipment, but by softly speaking in the complimentary language while each speaker was saying their piece. We chatted informally for a while and then my Exco colleague Sports Minister Mutko joined us, giving us the opportunity to practice and establish a working cadence of translation.



About an hour passed, while the PM had his cabinet in his office to consider how to put out the fires and to reduce the tension and the dense smoke that filled the city. Rain would have helped, but the weatherman brought no relief and the politicians needed to continue to do their best to fight the fires while battling mounting negative public sentiment. Minister Mutko left the room and went to check on when we would be received. While he was gone, I was ushered into a small receiving room with three large comfortable chairs. I calmly waited on the one with my name placed by protocol to make sure I was seated in the right place. All of a sudden, word came to the room that we were to move to another place to actually meet. So, with the translator in tow, we walked down a long corridor and through a room full of cabinet members and key officials. As the large doors to his private inner sanctum swung open, I was greeted by a smiling and very affable leader of the government, Mr. Putin himself.



A firm handshake and a personable smile set the tone for what turned out to be a very special experience. He guided me to sit on a leather couch in the near right corner of the room. At right angles to that couch was another matching one where he took up his position so that we flanked the corner of a large wood bordered coffee table. On my couch, sitting near enough to be part of the conversation was the translator; while on Mr. Putin's was Vitaly Mutko. The conversation began in a normal enough way, each of us thanking the other for making time for the visit. Genial welcomes continued until at one moment, he looked at me with a very serious gaze and said, without cracking a smile, "You know, you look like Karl Marx!"



I guess I could have responded to his observation in any of a dozen unpredictable ways. Instead, I simply winked at him and said, "I know". This brought an immediate response with him lifting his right arm up in the air and thrusting it forward to give me my first High-5 from a Prime Minister. I must admit that it was unique after all we have heard about this famous leader of the Russian Republic with a work history in the KGB. So, who knew what to expect? I can tell you that this began a half hour exchange of wit, charm and effective communications.

Shortly after the High-5, he had some questions about my blog. Yes, this same one you are reading now. He asked how it began. I told him about the World Cup in Germany and the fact that I had many special experiences which I wanted to share with people who didn't have the same opportunities. So, I began Inside the World Cup, which ran until the final whistle in Berlin.

Shortly thereafter, Travels with Chuck Blazer was born. I still had many experiences to share, albeit not accompanied by as much writing as during the World Cup. Instead, more pictures, since recreational writing at times can be very demanding in the face of other obligations. Following discussion on other topics, Mr. Putin rose and walked to a wall behind the table where his cabinet had just met. He slid open two massive doors, revealing a beautiful wooden inlaid map of the whole of Russia, which filled the expanse of the largest wall in the room. As he did this, he talked about a vacation he was about to go on during the waning days of summer. He said that security normally doesn't like him talking about his plans in advance, but he wanted to share with me some of the plans he had in mind. He walked from the western edge of the map where his St. Petersburg home and Moscow were located and walked to the right towards Siberia and great river deltas and continental roadways being connected. He talked of the things he planned to do, but I must admit I thought he was just trying to show me how very large an 11 time zone land mass of Russia is, when walking from the map's western edge to the eastern perimeter.

Before returning to the table, he posed the question, "If I send you pictures from my trip, will you post them in your blog and then what will you do?". I told him yes, the pictures would definitely appear and I would change the name of the blog to "Travels with Chuck Blazer and his Friends". Indeed, what he was telling me was the real preview of his trip. So, I now happily do what I committed to him and share with you the pictures he has been kind enough to send to me. You will note the new title of the blog has now reflected the pictures from my friend. I hope this opens up my forum to allow for other generous contributions of the people I have had the pleasure to meet in my very special role with FIFA.












Thank you Mr. Putin. I hope you enjoyed my retelling of the story of my visit to your office. It was an honor to be there.

Visit by the Japanese Consul General in New York..

Ambassador Shinichi Nishimiya visited the office of CONCACAF in New York to help support the bid of Japan as host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Blazer said that the Japanese bid was an unique document in that it looked into applications of technology that were truly impressive. He said that one of the great advantages of competition in bidding is the opportunity for new ideas and concepts. The Japanese bid had plenty of innovative thinking and Blazer said he was proud to see that his friends in Japan had been so creative. Pictured below, Ambassador Nishimiya and Chuck Blazer pose with the Japan 2022 brochure.

Happy Birthday Jiri...

FIFA's Chief Medical Officer, Prof. Jiri Dvorak, spent his birthday with us in New York and lent his talents to our Winners Health production.

The holiday season in New York kicks off in store windows...

Medical Shootout...

Sunday was spent on the training field at Ramapo College in Mawhaw, New Jersey, where I joined our production crew who were working on a new and important project called CONCACAF Winners Health. They are in the process of shooting a series of 14 medical topics targeted to Coaches, Players and Parents. This plain-talking informative series is being produced in English and Spanish and will be distributed through TV and the internet by CONCACAF in 2011. Watch for it!

Canada Wins Women's Qualifying in Cancun...

Canadian Women's Team hoist the trophy in Cancun.

Mexican team finishes in a heroic second place and qualifies for the FIFA Women's World Cup in Germany next summer.

USA defeated Costa Rica 3-0 to manage third place and a playoff for the FWWC with Italy.

I was there with my friends and colleagues, Guillermo Canedo and Jack Warner.