FIFA Will Be Seeing a Whole Lot More of David Beckham’s Face in the Future

We know where World Cup 2010 is going to be. And Brazil won the contest for World Cup 2014 without a peep form any other CONMEBOL nation. But FIFA’s continental rotation policy is out of the window for World Cup 2018, which means the return of good old fashioned bidding wars. England have raised the stakes by roping in David Beckham to front their 2018 bid. The Daily Telegraph reports that Beckham “gave a unanimous yes” when approached by the governement’s 2018 spokesman Richard Caborn. Can one man given anything but a unanimous answer? Or is there more than one David Beckham? Maybe Posh, Brooklyn and the other one get a say? Either way, Beckham’s on board and the race for 2018 is underway.

Not really sure how much use Beckham’s face will be in winning FIFA over. A successful bid is really about politicking to get votes. “The key to success is working something out with the eastern bloc of new satellite countries who are flexing their muscles,” plotted Caborn. “It is good that the Ukraine and Poland already have the European Championship, but it is imperative that we get these nations on our side to win the voting against Russia.”

Caborn also admitted that “mistakes were made in our last campaign for the 2006 World Cup and there must be no repeat.” Mistakes like shaking hands on a gentleman’s agreement not to bid against Germany and then later pretending no such handshake ever took place, is what he means.

The new rotation dealy is that no continent that hosted either of the previous two World Cups can bid, which rules Africa and South America out of the 2018 bidding. But England’s rivals for the 2018 bid are all pretty serious: Russia, USA, China, Australia, Greece, Mexico and a joint triple threat bid from Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg (known as the Benelux bid) will all be competing.

But my favourite is this joint bid from Israel and Palestine which won’t win for obvious reasons, but is a beautiful idea nonetheless.