The last-minute lobbying of UEFA offered nothing except befuddledenthusiasm and a huge dollop of hype, writes Tom Humphries
They say that if you sit at a high-stakes poker game for 10 minutes without figuring out who the dupe is then the dupe is probably you. Our dupes who blithely sat at the table for a year come home from Switzerland today crestfallen and ready to divvy up the blame.
No surprise there. No twist in the tale. No triumph for wishful thinking and big promises. UEFA, beleaguered and worried themselves, placed the Euro 2008 Championship into the safest hands available and thus spared themselves further fretful immersion in the mucky politics of Irish sport. Maybe Bertie will get his Bowl. Maybe he won't. Either way, UEFA decided that they didn't need to share the worry.
If anything causes a raised eyebrow, it is not the extent of the humiliation, which is total, but the fact that members of the bid team and some dizzy members of the media seemed surprised. The bid was in not waving but drowning territory from the time Jack McConnell refused to provide a ha'p'orth of tar and instead added Ireland's name to the team sheet.
Our failure is embarrassing, not least because the Scots portion of the bid offered almost everything except conviction while we offered nothing except befuddled enthusiasm. In a weak field, close but no cigar wouldn't have been a consolation anyway, but to be designated an also-ran is a disaster. Our banana republic approach to the issue of major sports infrastructure has been distressing enough without us showcasing our incompetence on the European stage.
Worst of course was our inability to see it. We were outmanoeuvred politically from the beginning. We generally are at this level. Although the rule of thumb at all these bidding events is that nothing changes the vote in the last few days, especially nothing which happens in public, we gorged on our own hype. The last 24 hours were a testimony to our innocent hubris.
Bidding processes traditionally end up with weeks like this one, where so much spin is absorbed by so many people that all critical faculties cease to work. We fell head over heels for our own charm though. It was remarkable.
Thus the excited notions that we could sway the vote with a "watertight" guarantee about two unspecified stadiums from a Government which has failed to build even one and has been instrumental in keeping soccer out of another. Hence the wishful thinking that selling ourselves and our fans as the jolliest, beeriest folk in Europe, the so called " fan factor", would cause the small UEFA constituency to pause and reflect regretfully on their own crippling native dullness.
We thought our 15 minute, last-day presentation would sway votes after a thorough examination process which had gone on for a year. There was a foolish overemphasis on ticket sales. The successful Dutch/Belgian hosted competition held two years ago had 1.2 million tickets available. It worked for television and for sponsors. The fact that we could offer the possibility of either half a million more tickets sold or lots of half-filled venues in the first round wasn't a big consideration.
There were many things which the Scottish/Irish bid had going against it before you came to count the critical failings here in Dublin. There was the weather. There was the lack of conviction from the Scots, both in terms of public support and government backing. There was the fact that, although we imagine ourselves to be the centre of the universe, we are small peripheral players and nobody else apart from the Irish and the Scots spend their days marvelling at how distinctly un-English we are.
In the real world, nobody really cares about Guinness or, ho ho, what Scotsmen wear under their kilts. While we got busy glad-handing, there was a critical lack of influence within the right corridors in Nyon and beyond.
One story illustrates the last point. These votes turn on perceived competency , on guarantees and on political matters which never rise to the surface. The process which ended yesterday should have concluded with Lennart Johansson presenting Scandinavia with the Euro 2008 competition as a goodbye present. Instead the unwieldy Nordic bid was left helpless after Johansson and UEFA tangled through the spring and summer with Sepp Blatter of FIFA. It was a process that left Johansson shredded politically and rendered UEFA a considerably less powerful force in world soccer.
Little wonder than that there was such alarm when Mario Pescante, the formidable Italian sports administrator who looks after sport within his country's Ministry of Culture and who also presides over the European National Olympic Committees, came riding over the hill this summer with plans to radically reform the process by which UEFA sells its TV rights.
Pescante was instrumental in getting the Italian soccer season started this year in the face of a massive dispute over TV rights and has spotted that the EU has missed a trick by paying such scant attention to sport, which under the Treaty of Rome comes under the heading of culture. Pescante has on his side the fact that sport, especially grassroots sport, has fared badly in terms of grants and cultural attention. He has noted that one of the few genuine pan-European experiences is the watching of big soccer matches. He has noted that UEFA's method of distributing TV rights is anti-competitive. He has a platform.
A MAJOR restructuring is on the way and, as with the Bosman ruling, UEFA will be virtually powerless to resist. For UEFA this time around there are two ways of approaching the problem. The easy way or the hard way. If they choose the hard way and fight tooth and nail not only will Pescante win but Blatter, who is an ally of Pescante's, will see UEFA further weakened. So too will the most powerful clubs in Europe, 72 of whom qualify for the nectar that is Champions League money every year. Blatter and the big clubs hover like vultures.
UEFA needs to co-operate with Pescante and be seen to shape the process for the good of football and for the expansion of football's audience.
And that's because Pescante will win. Silvio Berlusconi has already accepted the inevitability of change. Other Italian allies, from Mario Prodi to Mario Monti, the EU commissioner for competition, will back Pescante all the way.
Enter Ireland. At a meeting one month ago in Copenhagen, top UEFA officials sat down with Pescante and discussed the future, their future. Pescante was pleased with their attitude and set a target of the second half of next year, when the Italians assume the presidency of the EU, for the completion of reform. Should it drag on further, Ireland will be assuming the presidency at the beginning of 2004. How would the soccer-mad Taoiseach be lining up on the issue? Informal channels were opened. UEFA were pleased with what they heard. UEFA were aware that the soccer-mad Taoiseach would be pleased in turn if the Scots /Irish bid were to succeed.
A couple of positive marks were entered in the ledger. We got a glimpse of the level the game is played at. Those marks counted for more than all the nods and winks and "to be sure, to be sure" guff which came with the discussion of our "stadium problem". Not enough of those opportunities arose, and the wounds which finished the bid off were largely self-inflicted. Forget about the weather and the fatal dithering on the stadium issue and ponder the absurdity of the FAI heading off to Switzerland, the home of efficiency, with the bid document in one hand and the Genesis report in the other.
Were UEFA this month to hand their pageant over to the care of an unreformed football association which was, just last month, described as lacking a "culture of discipline"; an association which was lambasted for its inability to plan; an association which a few years ago presided over the only full international which needed to be abandoned due to rioting; and an association hit by a scandal over ticket sales during the 1994 World Cup?
So it's over. A small, silly episode best forgotten. Let the recriminations begin. After that, all parties concern have more pressing sporting matters to be dealing with.