The Age newspaper reported on how lavishly these services are being rewarded by the FFA:

Mr Hargitay is being paid $1.35 million by the FFA and has a success fee of $2.54 million. Mr Radmann’s work for the Australian bid, which the FFA has attempted to keep confidential, will earn him up to $3.49 million via a German consulting firm. He is also entitled to a $3.99 million success fee. As part of a separate contract, the FFA is paying Mr Radmann’s business partner, Andreas Abold, an additional $3 million for World Cup “bid book production and bid advice”. It is unclear if Mr Abold will also receive some of Mr Radmann’s fees.

As the Observer put it today:

Radmann’s career highlights: long-time Sepp associate, former managing director of ISL – Fifa’s marketing agency which collapsed in 2001 after paying £60m in bribes (Radmann was not implicated), plus allegations in 2000, all denied, about a scheme to incentivise key Fifa officials to back Germany’s 2006 bid. Radmann later stepped down from the Germany 2006 organising committee after awarding a lucrative contract to his business partner.

The Age explained further Radmann’s past:

Hargitay is not the only international soccer lobbyist on the FFA payroll. He is joined by Fedor Radmann, a German businessman who can speak four languages, loves opera and mountaineering, and between 1979 and 1989 was the managing director of sports marketing company ISL.

He is also a man rich in apparent conflicts of interest between his business interests and the sporting associations he represents.

The European company has been embroiled in a long-running Swiss court case over alleged bribes to FIFA and other sporting officials. The case was settled earlier this month after key participants agreed to make big payments, with a Swiss prosecutor affirming earlier comments from a judge that ISL had made improper inducements.

Once again, we turn to investigative Andrew Jennings to fill in the blanks on Radmann: who is, as Jennings puts it, “the self-styled Mr Fixit of the world game”.

The question is, what exactly is it that Radmann does that’s so valuable?

Nobody’s quite sure what Fedor does so well – it’s nobody’s business – but whatever it is, he learned everything from the Master. Thirty years ago Horst Dassler made him head of the Adidas International Relations Team – aka the Department of Dirty Tricks & Votes Fixing – and Fedor’s career has gone downhill, subterranean, into places you wouldn’t want your children marooned in. He must have developed night vision eyeballs because whatever Fedor does, he does it in the dark.

Radmann’s links to the global game and the World Cup go back decades, and reach to the highest levels of the sport.

In 2000, Radmann was selected by Franz Beckenbauer to play a key role on the Organising Committee for the 2006 World Cup to be held in Germany, touted as a “marketing and PR expert”. He had previously been the co-ordinator of Germany’s successful World Cup bid, one tainted by allegations of bribes paid to FIFA officials to secure the vote, as the Age recently recapped:

In 2000, shortly before the FIFA officials voted, Radmann was tied to a scheme to channel large payments to “trust accounts” associated with at least three FIFA officials. These payments were ostensibly for the broadcast rights to football matches that on the open market would have struggled to find a buyer due to their limited audience appeal.

In an associated deal, $1 million in consulting fees were sent to a Lebanese racehorse owner called Elias Zaccour, who was very close to leading FIFA officials.

The German media suggested these payments were sweeteners to impress key FIFA officials. Radmann and the FIFA executives allegedly involved in this foul play dismissed the claims, despite the documentary evidence aired by the German press. Radmann has not responded to questions from The Age.

Radmann’s role on Germany’s 2006 World Cup organising committee soon landed him in further public disrepute. The book German Football: History, Culture, Society detailed Radmann’s controversial tenure heading its marketing efforts, particularly with regard to the unveiling of the 2006 World Cup logo in 2002:

When the Organising Committee (OC) started its work on 1 January 2001, Fedor H. Radmann, the OC Vice-President at the time, was responsible for the section ‘Art and Culture’. Radmann, a close confidant of Franz Beckenbauer, however, came under immense negative pressure when the official logo was presented. The ‘creative disaster’ (as the renowned design magazine Die Form put it) was mocked by German designers and the national and international press poked fun at it. . . Those responsible, namely Fedor Radmann and the OC, were promptly taken to task by politicians, as they had neglected to carry out a formal competition for the logo.

The controversial 2006 World Cup logo

It was revealed that Radmann and the OC had selected a Munich-based design company, abold, owned by Andreas Abold, to work with London-based Whitestone International on the logo design. Abold just happened to be closely connected to Radmann, with business connections going back thirteen years. The German press increasingly poked into Radmann’s connections with many of the companies central to the World Cup in Germany: his previous work with adidas and to Leo Kirch’s failed company ISL in particular.

By mid-2003, the controversial wheeler-dealer Radmann had to resign from the OC, acting from that point on as an ‘OC special advisor’ only.

The FFA has since called on both Radmann and Abold to work on their bid, to return to The Age report again:

Australian press reports that mentioned the recruitment of Abold failed to mention Radmann.

As secret FFA documents from 2009 reveal, Abold was awarded two Australian government-funded contracts after being appointed sometime around early 2009. These contracts were handed out in confidential deals, done without any, or minimal, competitive tendering.

The first contract is worth $3.2 million and is labelled “Abold 1: Bid Book Production and Advice”. It requires Abold to help design and produce Australia’s Bid Book, a crucial marketing document that promotes the nation’s case to host the cup.

The second contract is more mysterious. It is worth $3.7 million and is labelled “Abold 2: International Relations/ Advocacy.” It may be more accurate, however, to label it as the Abold and Radmann contract. For, as other FFA documents make clear, the Abold 2 contract actually goes, at least partly, towards financing Radmann’s duties.

It also includes a very hefty bonus to “FDR” (Radmann), should Australia win hosting rights to the World Cup. So what exactly is Radmann doing for Australia?

The answer to that question is that despite his disastrous tenure with Germany’s World Cup organisation, Radmann’s perceived value lies in the connections he built there and earlier in his career, particularly to FIFA Executive Committee member Franz Beckenbauer.  Could this have influenced Beckenbauer’s December 2009 statement that Australia’s World Cup bid was “perfect” and notably had “the support of some very, very experienced people who know exactly how it works and what it takes to be successful”? Australia’s 2022 World Cup bid page boasted:

Franz Beckenbauer has hailed Australia’s 2018-2022 FIFA World Cup bid as ‘perfect’, adding that the country can’t ask for better promotion than hosting the world’s biggest tournament.

Beckenbauer is a member of the FIFA Executive Committee, the 24-man panel who’ll decide the hosts for those respective tournaments in a year’s time and was heavily influential in the lead up to and during the 2006 World Cup in his home country.

He said Germany is still basking in the afterglow of 2006, which helped change the world’s perception of Germany, and said Australia would reap similarly massive benefits.

“The FIFA World Cup is the most seen sporting event in the world,’’ Beckenbauer said.

“Billions and billions of people are watching all the games and it’s the best promotion that your country could have.

“In terms of the bid itself, I think it’s a great bid, it’s perfect and also you have the support of some very, very experienced people who know exactly how it works and what it takes to be successful.’’

Those people are the likes of Hargitay, Radmann and Abold’s expensively recruited company, abold, who played a key role in South Africa’s 2010 World Cup bid as well as in Germany 2006. The employment of these figures becomes a virtuous or vicious circle depending on your perspective: with each bid’s success, and the role played by the same small group of elite marketing consultants in them, those marketing consultants’ connections grow and their employment becomes ever more desirable, as Abold himself explained in an interview with the Host City website:

Our clients award us contracts mainly based on the strong bidding experience we have gained over a period of almost 20 years. Besides FIFA bids, we have also prepared bids for the Olympic Games, European Athletics Championships, 59th UITP World Congress, ICCA Congress and others. In every business it is important to know your target group well. We are proud to have established long-standing relationships with our clients, not only during the bidding phase for an event but also in the implementation phases. This, by nature, results in close ties.

These crucial “close ties” bring us back to the same issue we began this series with when we looked at Australia’s suspect gift-giving practices to FIFA’s Executive Committee members and FIFA’s absurd and inadequate Code of Ethics. The rotten core of this subterranean process for selecting World Cup hosts lies in Zürich, Switzerland, at FIFA’s headquarters. It lies in the set-up of FIFA’s all-powerful Executive Committee, 24 men (and they are all men) so long and so deeply embedded in the political subterfuge and grubby finances of the organisation of the world’s game that it’s doubtful they even realise how corrupt they are perceived to be by so many. Secretive decision-making practices, a lack of public transparency and tenure on the Committee that can stretch to decades (with unlimited reelection of four-year terms) makes a mockey of FIFA’s claim to be democratic.

Here is how long each Ex-Com member has been on that body (with most having earlier relationships to FIFA stretching back years as well):

President
Sepp Blatter: 12 years

Senior Vice-President
Julio Grondono: 22 years

Vice-Presidents
Jack Warner: 27 years
Issa Hayatou: 20 years
Mong-Joon Chung: 16 years
Ángel María Villar Llona: 12 years
Michel Platini: 8 years
Reyanld Tamarii: 6 years
Geoff Thompson: 3 years

Members
Michel D’Hooge: 22 years
Ricardo Teixeira: 16 years
Mohamed Bin Hammam: 14 years
Senes Erzik: 14 years
Chuck Blazer: 14 years
Worawi Makudi: 13 years
Nicolas Leoz: 12 years
Junji Ogora: 8 years
Amos Adamu: 4 years
Marios Lefkaritis: 3 years
Jaxques Anouma: 3 years
Franz Beckenbauer: 3 years
Rafael Salguero: 3 years
Jerome Valcke: 3 years
Hano Aby Rida: 1 year
Vitaly Mutko: 1 year

As we can see, the tenure of some of the senior executive committee members, the most influential men in world soccer, is extremely long, with Jack Warner spending 27 years there cultivating and being cultivated surrounding decisions that impact how billions of dollars are spent year in, year out. And hence, the likes of Radmann and Hargitay, with their connections to senior members stretching back years, are recruited at high cost for Australia’s World Cup bid team. The Sidney Morning Herald explained how Jack Warner had been wooed:

As one of 24 on FIFA’s executive committee (Exco), Warner in December will help decide which nations will host the 2018 and 2022 Cups. As a contender for 2022, Australia is counting on Warner’s support in the later rounds of the FIFA ballot.

Assisting Australia to court Warner is Football Federation Australia’s highly paid lobbyist, Peter Hargitay, who helped arrange the Warner-Rudd meeting.

It is understood that Hargitay was also involved in arranging, at Warner’s request, the sponsorship by the FFA of a trip for the Trinidad and Tobago under-20 men’s football team to a training camp in Cyprus last year.

FIFA revealed it is investigating the trip.

A statement said: “FIFA can confirm that it is looking into this matter. For the time being, FIFA cannot disclose any other details or make any further comment.”

The trip would have cost the FFA – presumably using Australian taxpayer money – tens of thousands of dollars. The Warner family’s travel company, Simpaul, was involved in arranging part of that trip, however, the FFA said yesterday all its dealings with the Trinidad and Tobago soccer team were through a separate and unrelated travel company.

It is also believed Hargitay was involved in, or at least knew of, a trip to Australia offered by the FFA to Warner supporter and a South American FIFA Exco member, Rafael Salguero, and his wife in December, as well as other gifts given to Exco members by Australia.

The lid lifted on Australia’s World Cup bid has demonstrated to the world once again how shady this process is, and just how badly we need reform at the highest levels of FIFA to stop the game falling even more deeply into the pockets of the likes of Hargitay, Radmann and Warner.

Why did one of Sepp Blatter’s key aides suddenly leave a top post at FIFA this week? Speculation from journalists is rife. The true story, sadly, is hard to find.

FIFA’s International Relations Director Jerome Champagne surprisingly departed from the world’s governing body this week, despite the fact that World Football Insider says Champagne had been “believed to be positioning himself for a run for Blatter’s job” next year. ESPN Soccernet similarly reported that “Champagne may have been positioning himself to run for president in next year’s election.”

Matt Scott at the Guardian concurs, seeing Blatter’s move as a sign of weakness:

Sepp Blatter is under increasing pressure as the president of Fifa, with his closest adviser having been dismissed last Friday following a coup. The departure of Fifa’s director of international relations, Jérôme Champagne, came as a result of the same stormy, seditious executive committee meeting last month at which Blatter was challenged over Fifa finances.

The move on Robben Island reflected a growing boldness among the heads of continental confederations, who have been growing their own powerbases and influence at the expense of Fifa’s once-omnipotent president.

Champagne’s direct courting of national associations – some say in an effort to promote his own ambitions towards the Fifa presidency, others say because he was under orders to cut out the confederations – left him vulnerable. And Blatter was told by the principal figures in the executive committee from the Asian, African and European blocs that unless Champagne was fired, the president himself would face a serious problem in future.

The background of unrest comes at a defining time for Blatter’s 12-year-old presidency and less than 18 months before he seeks re-election for another four-year term. His delivery of the first World Cup on African soil comes to the crunch this year and risks being a logistical disaster, with sponsors and fans declining to travel to a nation of questionable security at a time of economic difficulty.

If Blatter has been relieved by the reaction to Champagne’s departure, he is not out of the woods yet. With several senior pretenders to his throne ready to mount their challenge from within Fifa’s ex-co, his reputation will stand or fall with events in South Africa this summer.

Andrew Jennings, our favourite thorn in FIFA’s side, reports a slightly different background story, noting that FIFA’s briefings to journalists only hint at what the acclaimed investigative journalist believes are the real reasons behind Champagne’s departure at the behest of a confederation boss we can guess resides somewhere in the Americas:

Sepp Blatter’s FIFA is in chaos following the frenzied sacking of Jerome Champagne, one of the few clean senior executives remaining at the highest level of world football.

Blatter capitulated to furious demands from one of the most corrupt members of FIFA’s 23-man executive committee – from outside Europe – that Champagne had to be fired.

He had become increasingly incensed at Champagne’s attempts to block his rampant thieving from football.

Blatter and his general secretary Jérôme Valcke spent Friday hurriedly persuading reporters that Champagne had to go because he was planning to run against Blatter in the presidential elections.

This is nonsense; Champagne never tried to build his own power base – and probably couldn’t have persuaded a single national association to risk Blatter’s anger and nominate him. It is virtually impossible to unseat Blatter who ‘looks after’ his voters in the national associations so generously with millions of dollars for unaudited ‘development.’

But Jennings does say that “An increasing threat to Blatter’s survival comes from FIFA’s World Cup sponsors who are letting it be known they are disturbed by the endless corruption allegations clouding his administration and dirtying their brands.”

So, might this be an opportunity for Michel Platini to ride in as a white knight? The AP reports that Platini will decide his future before the 2010 World Cup, saying “I’m very happy (as UEFA president), but, still, I can also be very happy elsewhere.” The Guardian speculates that Platini may challenge Sepp Blatter instead. Platini, though, would have a lot of work to do to win the necessary votes from outside UEFA to beat Blatter, or another confederation chief.

And yeah, I’m as confused as you are as to what’s really going on here, and I shan’t pretend to know otherwise. And sadly, that’s just how Sepp Blatter, Jack Warner and the many cronies getting rich out of our love for the game want it to be.

And the parlour games go on.

David Beckham, Ambassador to the World

Big Story
Winning the right to host the World Cup finals is about much more than the actual content of the bid, as we commented yesterday when examining the United States’ solid package.

For England, it’s been a torrid time of interminable controversy inside the bid administration, with the unseemly bickering between the Football Association, the Premier League and all the egos of England’s bloated football administration. The U.S., without the intense press coverage of the sport and with a much more streamlined (perhaps too much so!) national administration, is able to avoid most of this.

And so the Daily Mail plunges another knife into England’s faltering World Cup bid, though there’s something a little unsettling about the major complaint being that “Yet another sign of a wasted opportunity came in the bear hug with which FIFA president Sepp Blatter greeted former FA chief executive Brian Barwick at the Soccerex conference in  Johannesburg. Barwick, one of English football’s best networkers, was not even deemed worth a place among the bid’s 70-odd ambassadors.”

Yet England does have one endless route to good publicity: David Beckham. The Times falls for Beckham’s ambassadorial role for the bid hook, line and sinker, commenting that “The England midfielder has emerged as the figurehead of the 2018 campaign and he has already had made progress in his attempts to charm Fifa power brokers such as Sepp Blatter, the president, and vice-president Jack Warner.”

Suddenly, we are reminded that this whole World Cup bidding process — with the need to snuggle up to the likes of Warner and Blatter — isn’t such an edifying business after all. Can we ever imagine a future in which the world’s game (as FIFA likes to call it) isn’t directed by 24 old and corrupt cronies who need their egos petted at all times?

Worldwide News

• The Colorado Rapids’ traditionally dismal supporters’ section may get a boost, as the Colorado Rapids Supporters Association says that “After several years of deliberating and negotiations, I’m proud to say the supporters are finally where they want to be…behind a goal!” They also say that negotiations with the front office will be bringing further positive change. Another step in the right direction for MLS teams’ dealings with supporters. Let’s hope it’s not too little too late for Colorado.
• A curious defense of agents appears on the Guardian by Lawrence Donegan. There’s a good argument to be made that agents are necessary, but it needs to be put in the context that their consistently underhand and greedy practices have at times severely damaged the sport and thus they need to be kept under extremely tight leashes.  Surely they could do their job being paid a lot less than the £70.7m the Premier League spent in the past year. Yet Donegan’s defense is instead a blabbering and completely irrelevant rant about Simon Cowell’s role in the entertainment industry: “The X Factor producer and judge runs his own record company which, coincidentally, signs lots of acts that appear on the X Factor.” Who the hell cares? Football does not need to take its cues from the pop industry.
• Why did Manchester United pull out of their deal for Serbian youngster Adem Ljajic? The Guardian speculates on, but offers little evidence for, further fnancial problems stemming from the Glazers’ debt-laden takeover.
• There was a pretty extraordinary ending to the Copa Sudamericana final, as Ecuador’s Liga Deportiva Universitaria went down to nine men, lost 3-0 to Fluminense in Rio de Janeiro and still hung for the title thanks to their 5-1 lead from the first leg.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Big Story
Jack Warner has returned a handbag given to him by the England World Cup bid because of “embarrassment”, launching — even by his absurd standards — a bizarre rhetorical attack on the Football Association.

Most odd was his wording at the lack of the response by the FA to his concerns: “Equally disappointing is the deafening silence from you and the FA and which seems to support these allegations,” Warner wrote to the FA. “No one has sought to correct this betrayal in a way that would unequivocally remove any doubt or question not only in the global village at large but among my few peers where honour is valued and character is cherished.”

Who does Jack think he is, Sir Lancelot?  Last I checked he was a greedy and corrupt minor politician.

Warner then continued with an usual use of wording. “This malaise of my wife and I has been allowed to fester for too long much to our embarrassment and the embarrassment of the institutions which I represent. In this regard, therefore, there is only one recourse: a return of this gift, which has become a symbol of derision, betrayal and embarrassment for me and my family.”

It’s about you got some derision, Jack, just a shame this is for something stupid that the English FA did, and not for one of your own many abuses of power.

Worldwide News

• It’s getting a little old commenting on what a mess it is, but America’s lower league crisis continues to drag on. Match Fit USA looks at the revamp USL-1 is facing, and potential expansion to fill the gaps left by the renegade teams. Anyone fancy a trip to Detroit?
• Supporters of Celtic in Scotland and St Pauli have long had a close association, and 1,000 of the latter are set to join Celtic fans as they face Hamburg in the Europa Cup today.
• Glasgow’s other major team has had another less friendly week abroad in Europe: the behaviour of Rangers fans in Bucharest may lead to another fine for the club. “Seats were ripped up and thrown at stewards during half-time of the Champions League fixture at the Steaua Stadium, prompting Uefa to make a PA announcement threatening the suspension of the game,” the Scotsman reports, though Rangers chief executive Martin Bain blamed the poor treatment of fans for the trouble.
• In today’s Stan Kroenke update, he has upped his share of Arsenal again to 29.9%, but Russell Kempson cautions that he is not yet ready to pony up the remaining £460 million needed to control the club outright.
• EPL Talk has an interesting piece on the different treatment given to beat journalists by American and English sports teams. The former have learned that providing good facilities and access is a way to win respectful coverage, as Eric Altshule wonders why Premier League clubs are so stingy: “with a ravenous press population eager to promote their product and a worldwide audience ready to consume every nuance and tidbit, why do teams deny access with such militancy?”
• I hope you’ve been following the Guardian’s excellent series on location in South Africa, looking ahead to 2010.

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

The spotlight was far brighter on the previous Gold Cup finals held just two years ago in this city. Most countries sent their ‘A’ squads: the U.S. rightly prioritised their own confederation’s contest over the Copa America they would participate in shortly after, probably because a spot in the Confederations Cup was the carrot for the winning team. Holding the semi-finals and final in Chicago at Soldier Field allowed the buzz to envelope the soccer-loving community in the city, and the final itself was a classic: a capacity 60,000 crowd at Soldier Field saw the U.S. defeat Mexico on a beautiful sunny day before a crowd clearly partisan for El Tricolor.

Gold Cup Final 2007, Soldier Field, Chicago

That buzz isn’t quite the same this year in Chicago, even though I’m looking forward to tonight. What’s different?

For a start, it seems awfully soon for the same semi-finals of the same international tournament to played in the same city (though the final will this year be held in New Jersey).  There’s a strong argument to be made that the Gold Cup ought to be held only every four years instead of biennially. This would ensure a great prize — qualification to represent CONCACAF at the Confederations Cup (now held only every four years) — is available every time (the US certainly took advantage of their opportunity in South Africa).

Such a change would of course give the tournament greater scarcity value. And it would also make it easier for MLS to do what it really should do during these important national team tournaments — stop domestic club play (even if only for the weekend of the final) to focus attention on the Gold Cup.

Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s, the CONCACAF championship was held only every four years — and the prize was even greater than qualification for the Confederations Cup. At stake was CONCACAF’s sole berth in the World Cup finals. No fewer than six different countries won the tournament out of the ten tournaments held between 1963 and 1989 in eight different countries.

Mexico and U.S. fans at the 2007 Gold Cup Final in Chicago

But in 1991 CONCACAF decided their regional tournament needed a rebranding, renaming it the Gold Cup and holding it roughly every two years since, with World Cup qualification no longer the prize. It has been hosted in the US every time (Mexico were co-hosts in 1993 and 2003), presumably because of the facilities available and the crowds that can be attracted across the country with such considerable immigrant populations from so many CONCACAF nations. Tonight’s semi-finals will surely feature more fans of Costa Rica, Mexico and Honduras than the Stars and Stripes.

The expansion of the tournament to twelve teams means it’s probable only Mexico could also even conceivably host the tournament logistically now, and the financial incentive for packed stadiums every two years in the US is likely to ensure the same set-up continues for some time, at least as long as CONCACAF is run by Jack Warner.

Something has probably been lost from the days when Haiti could host the CONCACAF championship in 1973 and surprise the world by winning it and heading to West Germany for the World Cup finals the next year. The hegemony of the US and Mexico has been broken only once in Gold Cup history, with Canada’s victory the lone non US or Mexican win (both countries have won it four times).

The Gold Cup has been a financial success since its inception, but it probably needs a few more upsets and little more scarcity value to ensure the kind of buzz we saw two years ago in Chicago is replicated every time.