FIFA Beef

I've meant to blog about this for a wee while. It was all announced on Thursday, but now it's all sunk in, I think it's about time I wrote a little something.

As we all know now, it's ended up with Russia 2018, and Qatar 2022. There's been a hell of a lot of uproar over all of this, but I'm actually quite happy with the result. It sticks to FIFA's plans of revitalising football-deprived areas. And Qatar's plan of demolishing parts of the stadia and donating them to third world countries is brilliant.

But, as a member of the British public, I've been inundated with the press and the media slagging off all the bids, complaining that we didn't win, and all that jazz. This is what we always do. Had we not won the 2012 Olympics, we'd have probably withdrawn from the IOC. It's just what we do.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of Sepp Blatter in the world - he does a lot of stuff for himself, rather than for the good of football. Yeah, he's probably been promised a lot of stuff to push through Russia and Qatar, but so what? If they believe it is the best bid, then fine by me. If it goes wrong, on his head be it.

But is that what has lost us the bid in the first place? Yeah, we had all the stadia in place, and the best transport links and stuff, but it's everything else that comes with it. The media in the UK just don't leave you alone. Look at the Panorama programme from earlier in the week.

We out some of the FIFA Executive Committee members as cheats - taking bungs and a shedload of money for their bid votes. We whine and moan, and try and woo them back over by sending Wills, Dave and Becks. It doesn't work, so we start resigning our positions at the FA and say we won't big again until FIFA is reformed. We're just stupid sometimes.

We should be embracing football. Investing in grassroots to ensure we still have the best players in the world in 10 years time. Not paying foreign managers £6m a year to manage a bunch of egotistical idiots for 10 games a year, at best.

We, as a footballing nation, need to have a good look at ourselves before criticising the big guys. Get a decent, and more importantly, stable infrastructure there to make sure that when we bid again, we walk in. And then, when we hold the World Cup, we prove that the inventors of the game truly are the greatest in the world.