In the fallout of the recent World Cup voting scandal that saw FIFA executive committee members Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii suspended following Sunday Times allegations that they asked for money for projects in return for World Cup votes, a senior official within FIFA has condemned the undercover operation (fronted by the Sunday Times newspaper) which exposed the two, as “unethical”.
Mohammed Bin Hammam, member of the executive committee which will vote on the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts, expressed severe reservations over the fairness of the Sunday Times investigation, which allegedly involved forging identity, fabricating evidence and setting deceptive traps for Adamu and Temarii. In a spate of vitriol, Bin Hammon asked “How will we clean dirty laundry by using dirty water ?”. Or in plainer terms: why should we condone those who seek to protect the ethic by using unethical measures? It’s certainly an interesting question, and indeed a particularly poignant one given the number of high profile ‘stings’ conducted by the press in the world of sport in recent times.
A particular case in point, was the elaborately conducted sting against snooker player John Higgins by the News Of The World newspaper, who sent undercover reporters disguised as businessmen and recorded a deal between the two parties whereby Higgins agreed to throw frames in exchange for money. After the scandal went public, an independent tribunal cleared Higgins of match-fixing; accepting that he had only acquiesced with the businessmen on the basis that he had “feared for (his) safety”. Now if this truly was the case, then question marks must be raised over the hectoring methods used by newspapers in their intrusive quest to reveal ‘justice’ in the game. With large sums of money being offered, along with alcoholic beverages to loosen their victim’s tongues, many will now take the view (like Bin Hammam) that those who conduct operations laced with entrapment, are no better than those who subsequently give in to the greed.
However, whilst people may rightly hold apprehensions over the ethical methodology behind such sting operations in the world of sport, they must go on for the simple reason that if they’re not being conducted by the press, then you can bet your life that somebody else will take the opportunity to seek corruption; someone who won’t then uncover the guilty party in question. The News Of The World’s recent exposure of match-fixing in the Pakistani cricket team actually served to raise more questions than it answered – in that it revealed how frighteningly simple it can be to alter the outcome of competitive sport. We can only speculate as to how rife match-fixing is in the game of cricket, but based on the current climate, it would take a very naïve individual to propose that it doesn’t exist on some level.
To return to the issue of the World Cup votes, Bin Hammam got one thing right when he said as an afterword “we all underestimated the passion for the game around the world; we miscalculated how much football has influence over the feelings of people”. This seems to be exactly the point; the World Cup is the largest sporting event in the world and the decision over its future venue is simply too important to be altered by the corruption of two individuals. In fact we should be thankful that such investigative reporting highlighted the matter before it was too late, and arguably served to self-regulate the fairness of the entire process. 
Sadly, in a rather sour turn of events, it has since been widely prophesied that England’s own bid to host the 2018 World Cup will suffer a backlash from FIFA members unhappy at the behaviour of the Sunday Times. Now it would obviously be a tragic shame for our nation to miss out the honour of hosting the World Cup based on such an incident as this, but in our response to FIFA, we must be unequivocal: if it’s the price England must pay for defending the purity of its sport, then so be it.
A Sporting Thought 