In the last few days of 2010, Zurich was in an excited state of expectancy. Europe’s wealthiest city was preparing to surpass itself by proffering the most comfortingly expensive luxuries that a plastic expense card could buy. The champagne crates were piled high, the fridges were bursting with truffles and foie gras, and the great chefs were dreaming up irresistible epicurean feasts to entice, delight and financially deplete their customers. Every decent hotel room was already taken, every taxi was making itself available, and the red light district along Langstrasse was expecting business to be brisk. The ‘FIFA family’ was coming to town in numbers that had not been seen for many years. There would be heads of state, prime ministers, billionaires, actors, models, fixers, public relations teams, football officials, journalists, TV crews and pundits, and an abundance of current and former players. This was a towering event which the world would be watching: the ballot to host not one but two World Cups.
The Qatar 2022 bid had booked early for the momentous event. Six months before, Mohamed bin Hammam’s uncomplaining assistant Najeeb Chirakal had been ordered to find three presidential suites, six executive suites and 54 deluxe rooms for the whole fortnight before the ballot. They were to be put up in the best hotels: the Baur au Lac, the Dolder Grand and the Savoy. The bill Chirakal passed on to Hassan Al-Thawadi for the entire stay was $960,000, including $150,000 for limousines.
Bin Hammam had flown in to join them in the Baur au Lac on the Monday, three days ahead of the vote, and was accompanied by his two right-hand men, Mohammed Meshadi and Amadou Diallo. There were butterflies in his stomach. This would be his moment of crowning glory or snivelling shame. Bin Hammam had paid the cash, done the maths and prayed that it would be the former.
If previously he had been a closet supporter of his country’s bid by force of necessity, he was now well and truly out and proud. Indeed, Sheikh Mohammed, the young royal chairman of Qatar 2022, had eulogised about the pivotal role he had played in the campaign in an interview a month before. ‘When it comes to executive committee members, we don’t really get involved in what happens inside the committee, because FIFA is very strict,’ he said. ‘But outside the executive committee and within the bid itself, Mohamed bin Hammam has been a very good mentor to us. He’s been very helpful in advising us how to go about with our messaging and can have the biggest impact. He’s always been advising us and always been by our side. He’s definitely our biggest asset in the bid.’
Bin Hammam was now taking up the cudgels on behalf of Qatar like never before. Stung by a whispering campaign against his country’s bid in the wake of the collusion scandal and FIFA’s withering technical assessment, he kicked the week off by issuing an open letter on his website rallying the ‘sons, colleagues and friends of the Qatar bid’ to take no heed of the naysayers: ‘I did warn you that your noble cause to host the World Cup 2022 will face some unethical resistance . . . You should expect more of this hidden war against your bid.’
As usual, the British media were daring to rain on FIFA’s parade. The news story dominating the airwaves came from a BBC Panorama documentary by the irrepressible journalist Andrew Jennings. It was aired with impudent timing on the Monday evening before the vote and its ripples would continue to be felt throughout the week. With his unkempt white hair and Cumbria-casuals dress sense, Jennings may not have looked like FIFA’s most ferocious adversary, but the men who ran world football’s governing body loathed and feared him. They tried to ban him from their media events but he cocked a snook at them every time – once even unbuttoning his shirt during a press conference to reveal a t-shirt saying ‘FUCK FIFA’.
Jennings had a wicked sense of humour, but he also happened to be a first-class journalist who was born to stick his microphone in the faces of the rich and powerful, keeping a straight face while asking the most excruciatingly pointed questions. It was Jennings who had picked apart FIFA’s ISL scandal layer by layer and, after years of patience, his contacts had finally come good with a piece of paper which showed exactly who had taken the bungs. His programme revealed that three of the voters – Ricardo Teixeira, Nicolas Leoz and Issa Hayatou31 – had received kickbacks in the nineties from ISL and a fourth, Jack Warner, was involved in attempting to sell World Cup tickets to touts. The FIFA executive committee were incandescent.
They were still fuming when they gathered together in their boardroom at FIFA headquarters on Wednesday morning, the eve of the vote. Sepp Blatter knew how to placate them. The South African World Cup had been a tremendous success financially and as a result they were to receive a $200,000 bonus on top of their $100,000-a-year salary. But the money meant nothing to Bin Hammam and his mood darkened as two guests were ushered before the executive committee.
The first was Andre Pruis, the South African police chief, who was there to deliver his terrorism assessment on the bids. His report was, of course, damning of Qatar’s security plans and Bin Hammam sat with an implacably serious face as the police chief singled out the Gulf state as the highest risk of all the bidders. Were any of his colleagues taking any notice? The faces around the room looked bored. He hoped they would ignore the warning.
Next up was Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the man who had been funded by FIFA to travel the world assessing the bids with his technical team to produce the definitive account of the strengths and weaknesses of the bids. He was proud of the thoroughness and independence of his work, and expected the executive committee to give his report some sober consideration before they made up their minds. But he was to leave disillusioned. The Chilean spoke for half an hour, but he felt as though he might as well have been talking to the wall when he singled out Qatar as the worst bid. The executive committee sat in silence and Mayne-Nicholls formed the impression that many of them had not even bothered to read his report.
Towards the end of his presentation, he grew tired of listening to the sound of his own voice and asked the Exco if they had any questions. The room froze, before one voice gently enquired about the hospitality Mayne-Nicholls had enjoyed on his tour of the bidding countries. ‘Did they all treat you well?’ That was the only thing the Exco wanted to know. The technical inspector packed up his files and left the room, wondering what his months of work had all been for. He was now convinced that the Exco’s decision would not be based on which country was best equipped to hold a World Cup. They clearly had other agendas.
By the afternoon it was time for the five 2022 bids to unveil their expensively made videos and deliver their final presentations to the executive committee. The photographers shivering outside on the FIFA hilltop came to life as a fleet of limousines drew into world football’s headquarters. The Qatari royal family had arrived. Sepp Blatter stepped up to the podium at 4pm to announce the distinguished guests who would present the Gulf bid to the Exco and the assembled media: the Emir, his wife Sheikha Mozah, the chairman of the bid Sheikh Mohammed, and the president of the Qatar FA Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Thani. ‘They are all the same family,’ Blatter said with a smile. ‘It is now up to you to present your bid and try to convince the executive committee, I wish you well.’
Sheikh Mohammed took the stage first, and appealed in fluent French to the Exco to back his country. But it was the final speaker, his mother, who captured everyone’s attention. Sheikha Mozah looked like a finely sculptured mannequin in her tightly tailored burgundy silk dress, the national colour of Qatar. ‘Mr Blatter, members of the executive committee, I would like to ask you a question. When? When do you think is the right time for the World Cup to come to the Middle East?’ she began.
Not a hair was out of place; not a mannerism ill-judged. Her delivery was slow and winsome: ‘Based on my feelings not just as a mother of my own children but as a mother for an entire generation of youth across the Middle East, for us football is not just a game. It is a sport for our time, anytime. In 2022, more than half of the population of the region will be under twenty-five and the World Cup here will have a different impact here than anywhere in the world. You can help us realise this elusive dream. You can help the youth of the region accomplish a lot.’
It was a masterpiece of controlled elegance which Michel Platini was later to claim was the thing that had won him over. She ended with the same question: ‘When? When do you think is the right time for this,’ – she motioned around the room – ‘to come to the Middle East? Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come. The time is now.’
It was a measure of her performance that she managed to eclipse two of the world’s greatest communicators. On next was a video with President Barack Obama rooting for the US bid, followed swiftly by a real-life former American president on the stage: it was Bill Clinton, a man renowned for the head-spinning power of his personal magnetism in any given room. The Americans had also rolled out Morgan Freeman, but even Hollywood’s most distinguished voice failed to move the FIFA audience. The commentators found the Americans insincere, perhaps because football was not a game the country’s luminaries had ever really played or watched.
The Australians had pitched in earlier with their own world-renowned beauty, the supermodel Elle Macpherson. As one antipodean blogger quipped, ‘Who needs bungs when we’ve got The Body?’ South Korea argued that a World Cup would help bring peace to their divided peninsula, although it wasn’t clear that North Korea had officially signed up to that idea. Japan outlined a futuristic vision for the tournament, promising to deck out 400 grounds around the globe with giant Sony 3-D flatscreens to give hundreds of millions of fans the opportunity of watching. But Sheikha Mozah had stolen the show. Bin Hammam sat back in his auditorium chair and relaxed. The butterflies had subsided. He had completed his groundwork with what felt like a million air miles and more illicit payments than he cared to recall, and now his country’s beloved first family had given the campaign the last lick of royal gloss it needed to sparkle on the night.
The four European bids for 2018 would be given their opportunity to make their final pitches the next morning before the ballot at 1pm, but Bin Hammam could sleep easily that night in the knowledge that everything was going to plan. He had been out for dinner with the whole Exco that evening and there was frenetic activity afterwards when the group spilled out into the bars and lobby of the Baur au Lac. The fixers and bid teams were button-holing the Exco members hoping for a scrap of new information or the chance to make a last pitch that might seal their vote.
The England bid had developed something of a Blitz spirit. Even if their cause was hopeless, they were going to fight to the bitter end. Maybe, just maybe, they could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat as the London 2010 Olympics team had done when they pipped the French five years earlier. The British prime minister David Cameron had flown out to Zurich earlier in the week, popped home briefly to attend questions in the House of Commons, and was now back again. Exco members would be given a gentle tap on the shoulder before being escorted to a suite upstairs at the Baur au Lac where they were greeted by Cameron and Prince William. FIFA’s rulers lapped up the attention from a prime minister and an heir to the throne, and several made all the right noises about supporting England. It would have been rude not to. The premier and the prince weren’t to know that, in this murky world, a promised vote wasn’t worth the ballot paper it was not yet written on.
In the same suite, Andy Anson, the England bid chief, and his sidekick Simon Greenberg were still shuffling around the counters on their improvised gaming board, trying to work out how the ballot would finally play out. There were a mind-boggling number of permutations but, even if the handful of votes they had been promised came good, hardly any of them worked out well for England. Greenberg’s heart was no longer in it. He had read the Hakluyt intelligence report warning that his country was likely to get only two votes, and he had long since told his colleagues they had all been ‘royally fucked’.
England had never been popular with the FIFA executive committee, and the recent intrusions by the British media had merely provided the men on the Exco with a justification for their inclination to cold-shoulder the country’s bid. The England 2018 team publicly attacked the BBC for airing Panorama in the week of the ballot, but it left them in no-man’s land: they were always going to be losers, and now they had conceded the moral high ground as well.
In the quiet of the night, once the whisky glasses had been drained and the hotel bars had emptied, many of the bid teams were already reflecting on what might have been. Five out of the nine understood that it was all over. Japan had given up the ghost on a victory long ago. Its Exco member Junji Ogura had struck a reciprocal vote-swapping deal with Belgium’s Michel D’Hooghe, but his country would be lucky to progress beyond those two votes. The Netherlands–Belgium bid had always been an outsider and its cycling-friendly green bid was now peddling furiously to avoid being humiliated in the first round. Australia had lost Reynald Temarii and could now count on only Franz Beckenbauer’s support. Sepp Blatter was promising to back them, but they knew his word of honour held about as much water as a didgeridoo. Chung Mong-joon was still doing deals, but it was all about damage limitation for the South Korean. All that mattered now was to muster a respectable number votes to keep his political ambitions at home alive and if that meant offering his support to more than one country, then so be it.
There was a small glimmer of hope for England when the country’s own voter Geoff Thompson finally came good and announced he had made a deal to exchange votes with Chung. The deal had looked golden when the South Korean had even promised his vote to Cameron and Prince William. But then, on the morning of the ballot, a senior member of the England bid team had spied him at breakfast with the Russian voter Vitaly Mutko in the Baur au Lac. He watched as the two men retreated to a discreet table and chatted for a while, before standing up and shaking hands decisively. ‘He’s just fucked us!’ the England official reported to colleagues. ‘He’s going to vote for Russia!’
So as the winter sun came up over a bitterly cold snow-fringed Lake Zurich, there were only four bids with real reason for optimism on the day of the ballot. The Americans were quietly confident because Blatter had said he was backing them. They were a commercial powerhouse which would generate more billions in television revenues than any of their rivals. Spain knew it could rely on the solid seven votes from the collusion deal with Qatar and that was a great platform to build on.
The Russians were gaining momentum at just the right moment. The country’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, had decided against attending the ballot, but had issued a statement twisting the knife in a tender wound for England: their media. ‘Recently, we have been saddened to see an overt campaign unleashed against members of the FIFA executive committee, who are being smeared and compromised,’ Putin lamented. ‘I see this as unfair competition in the run-up to the vote to choose the host of the World Cup.’ He added: ‘I should refrain from attending out of respect . . . for members of the FIFA executive committee, in order to give them an opportunity to make an unbiased decision calmly and without any outside pressure.’ The England bid had picked up intelligence that he and the FIFA president were jointly lobbying Exco members to back the Russians over the phone and the Kremlin-supporting Izvestia newspaper was reporting that ‘Blatter is our ally’.
And then, of course, there was Qatar. Bin Hammam’s plan had been perfectly executed and barring a last-minute disaster, the Emir would have his ‘big cake’ at last.
Snow was swirling around the FIFA hilltop when the 22 voters filed into the snoozily warm boardroom at 2pm on 2 December 2010. The door was shut firmly behind them and blackout blinds were pulled down. In front of them were a notary and an observer from the KPMG accountancy firm who had been tasked with making sure that the ballot for the two World Cups was fair and proper. This was the moment that Bin Hammam had been working towards for two years. He could hardly wait for the voting to start, but he would have to be patient for a few minutes because the ballot for 2018 was first.
It was hardly a surprise that the first act of the FIFA executive committee was to kill off the England bid. The birthplace of football and home of the Premier League received only two votes, just as Hakluyt predicted, and they were out. Issa Hayatou had kept his word and voted for England in return for the FA’s support for his presidential bid back in 2002. The second vote was Thompson’s, who would honour his promise to vote for South Korea in the 2022 race, but Chung had double-crossed him and gave his ballot to Russia. When he was angrily confronted over the betrayal later by an English official, the South Korean would reply serenely: ‘That’s football.’
The last-minute lobbying for Russia by Putin and Blatter had clearly paid dividends, as its bid stormed straight into the lead in the opening round, with nine votes. Moscow had been relying upon Vitaly Mutko, Chung, Franz Beckenbauer, Jack Warner, Chuck Blazer, Jacques Anouma and Blatter in the first round, and it looked as if they had all come good. They were followed closely by Spain who had exactly the seven votes guaranteed by their collusion pact with Bin Hammam. The Netherlands–Belgium bid defied expectation and survived the opening round, notching up four votes. D’Hooghe had made a vote-swapping deal with Ogura, which accounted for two of those, but the identity of the other two remained a mystery.
The ballot then went to a second round, when a clear winner emerged. The margin between Spain and Russia had been tight enough to make it tough to call which way the votes had shifted. The victor would be announced in a ceremony that afternoon, but the nervous 2018 bidders would have to wait until the 2022 ballot had run its course first.
Now it was Bin Hammam’s big moment. He opened his notebook and glanced down at the names of the members he hoped would have voted for Qatar by the final round, ready to tick them off as the ballot progressed. There were the seven voters from the Iberian collusion pact – him and Spain’s Ángel María Villar Llona, then his own supporters Worawi Makudi and Hany Abu Rida and the three Latin voters the Spaniard had brought to the table, Julio Grondona, Nicholas Leoz and Ricardo Texeira. Then there was Michel Platini, who had promised the French president Nicolas Sarkozy he would vote for Qatar, as well as the other two remaining Africans Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anoua, and his well-paid brother Jack Warner. These were his core supporters.
He hoped very much that the ‘bilateral relations’ he and Vitaly Mutko had been discussing between Russia and Qatar would bring him another vote, and he had done his best to remind Franz Beckenbauer of the debt of gratitude he owed Qatar after the German World Cup, so he hoped Der Kaiser would switch over his support once Australia was out. He wondered whether his efforts to woo Michel D’Hooghe of Belgium would bear fruit. One certainty lay in his pact with the Asian voters, Junji Ogura and Chung, who he knew would transfer their votes to Qatar once Japan and South Korea crashed out.
The voters handed in their ballots, and the notary sifted through them before announcing the results. Qatar had stormed straight to the head of the pack with 11 votes – exactly half the total and just one short of instant victory. Bin Hammam’s heart swelled with joy. It would be almost impossible not to win from here. The Iberian pact had held good with seven votes and he also ticked the names of Platini, Anouma and Hayatou on his list. After chewing contemplatively on his pencil for a moment, he also checked off Warner. South Korea were second with four, including votes from Mutko and the guileless Thompson. Both the USA and Japan polled just three votes each and Australia were knocked out with a paltry one. Later, Blatter and Beckenbauer would both tell the Australians that this solitary vote had been theirs.
Now Australia were out, Bin Hammam was hoping for Beckenbauer’s vote and he put a tick next to Der Kaiser’s name. That would hand Qatar victory. But when the second-round results were announced, his heart sank. Rather than gaining the one extra vote it needed to win, Qatar had lost ground and dropped down to ten. Which of his colleagues had abandoned him? Still, he remained well ahead. The USA and South Korea progressed to five each, and Japan dropped out. Qatar gained Ogura in the third round and went back up to 11 – once again just a tantalising single vote from the 12 needed to reach a majority. Just as he hoped, South Korea dropped out after being pipped narrowly by the US, who now had six votes. That meant Chung’s vote belonged to him.
It was nearly time for the fourth round, and Bin Hammam was staring down at his notebook again. He added a tick next to Chung’s name, alongside marks against Abo Rida, Anouma, Beckenbauer, Grondona, Hayatou, Leoz, Ogura, Makudi, Mutko, Platini, Teixeira, Villar Llona and Warner. He was so close to victory, but the disappearing vote after the first round continued to perplex him. Qatar’s tally stood at 11, but there were 14 names now ticked off on his list, not including his own, which meant three of the supporters he had been counting on had not behaved as he had hoped. What if more of Qatar’s voters dropped away in the final round?
In his state of nervous excitement, the Qatari hadn’t stopped to think that he was sitting next to Chuck Blazer, who was representing the last rival still in the ballot, America. Blazer could not resist glancing over Bin Hammam’s shoulder to get a peek of what he was up to, and one of the names on the list made his blood run cold with fury: Jack Warner. The president of CONCACAF had to vote for the USA. So why had Bin Hammam ticked his name? It was a moment that was to shatter the once inseparable friendship between Blazer and Warner forever. The US bid leader, Sunil Gulati, would never speak to the man from Trinidad again. It was such a little error by Bin Hammam, allowing the CONCACAF general secretary to read his list over his shoulder. It was just a momentary lapse in concentration as he got caught up in the big moment he had been working towards for two long years. And yet the consequences of that split-second misjudgement would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Bin Hammam crossed the box next to Qatar on his ballot paper for the fourth time and handed it in. He scrutinised the faces of his colleagues as they made their marks. The papers were counted, and then it was all over. The Exco were informed that a winner had emerged, and the victor would be named at a ceremony to follow. Barring an implausible collapse in the final round, Bin Hammam knew Qatar must have triumphed, but he wouldn’t quite believe it till he heard Blatter say it. The names of the winners were printed on two cards and placed in white envelopes which were sealed with red wax. The notary, with the observer in tow, then took them by car to the Messe conference centre where the world’s media and all the bid teams were waiting anxiously in the auditorium.
The heat of the television lights were burning onto an empty podium waiting for Blatter to step up onto the stage at 4pm and reveal the results of the election. It was a room adorned with princes, prime ministers and presidents. The Emir’s family waited patiently three rows back on the left side of the vast room, with Bill Clinton and the sparrow-faced Gulati directly in front of them. The Russians were on the right flank alongside the England bid, who were already looking stony faced. All along the front row were the real overlords of the occasion, the FIFA executive committee. Bin Hammam looked relaxed as he leaned back in his chair but Mohammed Meshadi, many rows behind, was so nervous he had almost not been able to bring himself to attend. ‘That bugger didn’t dare go to the conference centre for the announcement,’ Bin Hammam’s assistant Jenny Be would later tell Michelle Chai. ‘I had to drag him there.’
With half an hour to go, Al Jazeera was already reporting that Qatar had won, but the sage football journalists in the media centre were dismissing the reports as speculation. Surely, even FIFA’s wonky executive committee wouldn’t choose such a preposterous candidate? Blatter was now up on the stage and had placed the golden World Cup trophy on the podium next to him. He was keeping the suspense with one of his long, meandering speeches about how FIFA represented a billion people who were involved ‘directly’ or ‘indirectly’ through their families in football – a reminder to the heads of state in the room that Blatter’s fiefdom was bigger than theirs. He was still waffling about football teaching ‘fair play’, ‘discipline’ and giving ‘hope to the humanity’, when a tweet from Dmitry Chernyshenko, the chief executive of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, started doing the rounds in the press centre. ‘Yesss! We are the champions! Hooray!!!!’ he had tweeted. And sure enough, a few moments later, Blatter pulled the winner’s name card out of the 2018 envelope and announced that Russia had indeed triumphed, with 13 votes.
After the Russian speeches and back-slapping, the auditorium hushed again. Bin Hammam scanned the line of executive committee members along the front row. Had they stayed true in the final round? He was quietly confident, but nothing was ever certain in the shifting quicksands of football politics. By now, Blatter had torn open the envelope and was fiddling inside to make sure he pulled out the card with the winning name on the correct side. ‘The winner,’ he began, ‘to organise the FIFA two twenty-two World Cup is . . .,’ and he momentarily flashed the name on the card to the world’s television audience before proclaiming: ‘Qatar!’
The royal family erupted in cheers, leaping to their feet and throwing their arms in the air. The young Sheikh Mohammed thrust up a punch of delight before being rugby tackled from behind in a jubilant hug by his brother Sheikh Tamim, the country’s future ruler. Their father, the Emir, was clapping vigorously, his face a picture of delight. At last, he had his big cake. Seeing his sons overcome with rapture, he strode across and wrapped his huge arms around the young Sheikh Mohammed, almost squeezing all the air out of the slender youth. The Emir spun round and was about to kiss his wife when he saw someone else standing there, waiting patiently.
It was Bin Hammam. He had sidled quietly up to the third row amid the uproar, and was keeping a discreet distance from the royal celebrations. In the past, he had stood head bowed in the presence of his mighty ruler, but today he was a national hero and the Emir reached across without thinking to give the architect of Qatar’s victory a warm and thankful hug. Next, Bin Hammam stepped up to Sheikh Mohammed and kissed him on the cheek. He marvelled internally at what he had achieved. Qatar had won with 14 votes to eight – trouncing its final rival, the USA. The weight of anxiety he had borne on his shoulders for more than two years had lifted and he could at last relax into the happy certainty that he had made his country, and his ruler, proud. The World Cup was coming to the desert and he, Mohamed, had made it happen.
In the row below Bill Clinton was smiling and shaking hands, but his companion Gulati now looked more like an angry bird than a sparrow, as he glowered across the room at Warner. Qatar’s royal family poured onto the stage and Bin Hammam was mobbed as he returned to his seat by passing members of the bid team following the royals into the limelight. An emotional Sheikh Mohammed was at the microphone. ‘Thank you for believing in change,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Thank you for believing in expanding the game, thank you for giving Qatar a chance, and we will not let you down! You will be proud of us, you will be proud of the Middle East and I will promise you this!’ The tiny Gulf state had done the impossible. Out in the streets of Doha, cars were hooting their horns and flags were being unfurled in the streets. Was the World Cup really coming to Qatar? Nobody could quite believe it.
After the stage had emptied and the crowd had spilled outside into the freezing evening, Chris Eaton had been left in the hall with a few members of his security team. They were checking the empty room to make sure nothing had been left behind. At the podium, Eaton came across the wax sealed envelope and the card with Qatar’s name on it, and his eyes lit up. He took a quick look from side to side, then slid the card under his jacket.
Bin Hammam had taken a back seat in Zurich, allowing the royals to glory in his achievement, but his friends throughout world football knew he was the true architect of Qatar’s triumph. He was flooded with emails of congratulation and gratitude from the football bosses whose support he had secured over the past two years. Some could barely wait for the celebrations to subside before queuing up for their rewards.
The day after the vote, Seedy Kinteh emailed: ‘On behalf of the Gambia Football Family and indeed on my own Humble self to warmly congratulate you for winning the FIFA Award to host the World Cup in 2022 in your beautiful country Qatar.’ He followed up with a message to Bin Hammam’s assistant a few days later. ‘I write to find out about the progress of my appeal concerning the Vehicle. I have already got in my possession a colosal sum of ten thousand Us Dollars . . . and any assistance will be of immense value to me.’ Kinteh said he needed the car to travel to football projects in the Gambian countryside.
Nicholas Musonye, the general secretary of the Council of East and Central Africa Football Associations (CECAFA), wrote to Bin Hammam: ‘This is a glorious moment to all of us in our zone and we congratulate you for the hard work and all the efforts you put in this bid. Your many years of hard work have been rewarded and you will go down in history books for what you have achieved for Asia and the people of Qatar.’ Two days later, he forwarded CECAFA’s bank details to accompany a request for $200,000 to fund a tournament in Tanzania and the money was paid.32
Tidiani Median Niambele, president of the Mali federation, extended his congratulations to Qatar ‘and especially you personally’ for winning the World Cup ballot. Bin Hammam replied: ‘I take this opportunity to extend my gratitude and appreciation for your support and I am confident that with your continued support Qatar can stage an amazing and ever greatest World Cup in 2022.’ And then Gu Jian Ming, president of the Chengdu FA wrote to say: ‘Allow me to express my congratulations on Qatar’s success in the bid to host the 2022 Football World Cup, which I believe cannot be separated from the great efforts you have made.’
In public, Bin Hammam took little credit for Qatar’s stunning achievement, but he felt it was safe to do so with his African friends who had helped out with his campaign. When Izetta Wesley, the head of the Liberian football federation got in touch to say ‘Dear Brother . . . Congratulation for winning your World Cup Bid,’ Bin Hammam wrote back acknowledging both his own role and his debt to his African supporters. ‘Thank you very much for your kind greetings,’ he wrote. ‘I would not have succeeded if not for the support from friends and believers like you.’
No one was more overawed by what Bin Hammam had done than his son, Hamad. The day after the victory was announced, the student sent his father a heartfelt letter. ‘Dear Dad, Yesterday was the best day of my life,’ he wrote. ‘It was better than any college acceptance letter, any official school reward and any job or internship offer. If I was an actor and I won an Oscar, it still wouldn’t be the best feeling; no moment like yesterday’s announcement made me happier. And I’ve always been proud of you, and I thought that it wasn’t possible to be proud of you more. But I was wrong. I’m not even more proud, I’m honored. I’m the luckiest person in the world to be your son. I am so lucky that sometimes people say, “You look like Mohamed bin Hammam,” or, “You have his eyes.” I would be lucky to be, not half the man you are, but quarter of the man you are. And I wish I could leave a legacy in our country as strong as yours.
‘You’re a trendsetter and, most importantly, you helped make history for our people and for our family. Your efforts to get us the world cup finally put mom, you, myself and my brothers and sisters on the map; it put the citizens of Qatar on the map. And, I think it is safe for me to say that I speak on behalf of all Qataris when I say that without you, and, of course, His Highness the Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, his outspoken first lady Sheikha Moza bint Nasser Al Misned – perhaps one of the most incredible women and most influential persons I would love to meet – and His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin Hamad Al Thani, a remarkable man, and, of course, the entire Qatar 2022 Bid Team. This can’t be happened without you, we appreciate your efforts.
‘And to speak for myself, I love you, and you are my idol. I may not want to be involved in the field of sports by the time I finish college, but I would love to be the reflection of you. One day, I will speak French, Spanish, German and Hebrew for you so I can show people that I was raised in golden, open-minded arms. Just like you showed the world, I will show Qatar that I, too, can be of great significance. And I will owe it all to you. Love you always, Hamad bin Mohammed.’
To Hamad’s surprise, his letter was later emailed back to him by Najeeb Chirakal with an instruction to edit it and resend it to his father. Hamad was told that it was unseemly to have claimed such a big share of the victory for the Bin Hammam tribe. He must alter his words to give more prominence to the role played by the royal family and official Qatar bid committee, and mention his father’s contribution only as a secondary factor at the end. Once the letter was re-sent, Hamad was told, it was going to be published on the AFC website. He glumly agreed to do as he had been asked.
The next morning, on 6 December, the letter caused a stir among the assistants in Bin Hammam’s offices at the AFC.
‘Check out P’s blog,’ Jenny Be messaged Michelle Chai. ‘He is right about growing up in the golden open arms . . . more like golden, diamond studded arms.’
Chai was tickled. ‘Hahahahahaha. But son is right . . . world cup was his doing . . . people can say what they want about the bid but he did it.’
‘Yes, he did it.’
‘I think he is proud too,’ Chai added.
‘He should be,’ responded Be. ‘That’s why he published the letter.’ After a pause, she ventured: ‘I kinda pity the son.’
‘Why ah?’
‘Coz he has to write to his father to tell him how he feels,’ wrote Be. ‘No time even when they are in the same city.’ Later, she told her friend: ‘Bugger, I have more than 500 emails in my inbox to clear, all congratulating our boss. They started to contact me when they couldn’t get to the boss. Yesterday I had to switch my phone off to get some sleep.’
‘Wah . . . euphoria not died yet,’ said Chai. ‘When you think about it, this must be his biggest legacy,’ she went on. ‘I mean dreams of millions and millions of people.’
‘Yes,’ Be agreed. ‘Coz he may not be there in 2022 but this is something he contributed to his country and to Asia.’
‘I hope the Qatari people and the QFA people and the bid team realises it as well,’ said Chai. ‘Realises and don’t forget.’
‘Yeah, and he said that they do, so am happy for that,’ Be said.
‘Sometimes people forget too easily,’ Chai cautioned.
‘Yeah, especially when you have those who don’t blink an eye before they take others’ credits,’ said Be, suddenly incensed at the prospect.
‘Yeap,’ said Chai.
‘Let him enjoy his moments,’ Be said firmly. ‘He is a hero.’
For all the hundreds of congratulatory messages that had flooded in from Bin Hammam’s supporters, no praise was quite so sweet as that of an adversary. Qatar’s triumph had humiliated Peter Hargitay, the master PR guru and lobbyist who had warned Bin Hammam two years earlier the Gulf state didn’t stand a chance. Now the boot was on the other foot. All Hargitay’s machinations on behalf of the Australian bid had managed to produce just one supporter. Since Hargitay had helped the Australians part with tens of millions of dollars on their campaign, that measly return for their investment was a contender for the most expensive single vote in history. Hargitay had waited four weeks until New Year’s Eve before sending a long email to Bin Hammam. His message bristled with bitterness, but Hargitay could not conceal his admiration for the masterful way Bin Hammam had manoeuvred behind the scenes.
‘I have reflected upon the – many good – times I spent in your company over the years, and the remarkable changes of your varying positions,’ he wrote. ‘I recall the one afternoon we spent talking for several hours in the lobby of the Mandarin. And I admit that some of the changes in your positions left me stupefied, while others were clear: you have always forged alliances where the expected outcome would justify the choices you make. And of course you have always harvested, as you should, when the time to do so was opportune. Clearly, this philosophy – not a new one by any means – has generated the kinds of results you have wanted, and you must be pleased with that. And I commend you for your remarkable achievements, which, in the context of Qatar, are plain spectacular.
‘I, for one, can only observe and acknowledge the stupefying achievements I witnessed by your hands, mind and spirit. When we first met, years ago, there was one Mohamed bin Hammam who was soft-spoken, discreet and by no means prepared to challenge this, that or the other. Not openly, nor quietly for much of the time. Today, the Mohamed that is, has become a leader who goes the route of many leaders.
‘Your strategic “savoir faire” and, more so, the tactical savvy that won your country the World Cup bid is spectacular. There can only be admiration for the way you handled the mine-field of changing loyalties. But your modus operandi, based on years of experience, combined with intimate knowledge of the players on the chess set of group dynamics, and your ability to offer what others could not, was a fine lesson in Machiavellian expertise, combined with cultural history – both of which combined, generated the results you wanted to achieve. Accept my respectful congratulations for that. Well done, remarkably executed, utterly accomplished . . . As always, your Peter.’