OBE Blog
By Bob Koep
Canada lost its bid for the 2011 Woman’s World Cup tournament to Germny in a decision made by FIFA at Zurich, Switzerland, today.
And chosing Germany over Canada, the only two bidders for the meet, was not really a big surprise.
Naturally, FIFA never gives a reason why it picks one contestant over another, but we speculate that our disorganization in the Canadian Soccer Association has something to do with it.
First of all there was nobody in authority to do the presentation of the bid in Zurich, mainly because we have no one in authority at the CSA headquarters in Ottawa.
So they sent the president of the Vancouver Whitecaps to do the job, but his job really is to run a club in a professional U.S. based soccer league, and not to represent the CSA.
But there is no CEO in the CSA and neither is there a technical director. The CSA is leaderless and it must be assumed that FIFA has learned about this situation.
In fact, it prompted FIFA earlier to advise the CSA to get its house in order and to fall in line with FIFA governance standards.
Moreover, FIFA is also aware of the fact that only this past summer Canada managed to lose money on the under-20 World Cup staged in this country.
Even though the CSA bragged high and low with having run the most successful tournament ever with a record attendance of nearly 1.2 million, the organization still managed to lose some $2 million. This deficit FIFA will probably have to pick up to balance the books.
And FIFA is really averse to running a deficit or bailing somebody out. They are in business to make money and did so on their end from their share of TV rights and sponsor involvement.
Thus the world soccer body is probably happy with its choice of Germany as that country has just last year run a superb World Cup tournament and there is no question it will do so again.
For Canada all that remains is to try again for the next Womens World Cup, slated for 2015, and by that time we might even have a proper organization in Ottawa.
At the same time at the Zurich press conference, FIFA announced Brazil as the host country for the 2014 mens World Cup. Of course Brazil was the only applicant and FIFA didn’t have a choice there. It seemed sort of funny that FIFA president Sepp Blatter walked up to the podium, opened an envelope, pulled out a card and announced Brazil as the winner!
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