Speaking out: Ignoring United States, FIFA mulls European World Cup in 2018

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In the latest bit of nonsense from world soccer’s governing body, FIFA revealed on Monday that it was considering limiting bids to stage the 2018 World Cup to European countries only.

In other words, the year or more of work put in by the U.S., Australia and Japan could all be for nothing because FIFA is changing the rules of the game after play has begun.

‘There is a movement at the moment among the various candidates that in the end it would be a good solution . . . if the candidates for 2018 would only be those from Europe,’ Joseph ‘Sepp’ Blatter, FIFA’s president, said at a news conference in Madrid.

‘It has not been finally decided, but it is the idea, also to make the work of FIFA easier and especially that of the executive committee.’

Originally, FIFA said that it accepted bids for both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and would award both in December 2010. Countries were free to bid for one tournament or the other or for both.

As a result, bids were received from Australia, England, Japan, Russia and the U.S., along with joint bids from Portugal and Spain and from Belgium and the Netherlands, to host either of the tournaments. In addition, Indonesia, Qatar and South Korea are bidding only for 2022.

The U.S. bid committee has been working for months in the expectation that it would be a viable candidate for 2018, with England and the U.S. widely viewed as front-runners. The Americans had gone so far as to trim their list of potential host cities to 18.

Now, if FIFA changes the rules, the U.S. would have to wait another four years to stage the event it hosted in 1994 and would be competing against Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Qatar and South Korea for the right to hold the quadrennial world championship in 2022.

The U.S. would still be the favorite, with Qatar the main threat.

As is frequently the case, FIFA’s decision-making appears to based on spur-of-the-moment notions with little or no thought behind them. But then, that has long been a Blatter trademark.

-- Grahame L. Jones