ccmfans.net is the Central Coast Mariners fan community, and was formed in 2004, so basically the beginning of time for the Mariners. Things have changed a lot over the years, but one thing has remained constant and that is our love of the Mariners. People come and go, some like to post a lot and others just like to read. It's up to you how you participate in the community!
If you want to get rid of this message, simply click on Join Now or head over to https://www.ccmfans.net/community/register/ to join the community! It only takes a few minutes, and joining will let you post your thoughts and opinions on all things Mariners, Football, and whatever else pops into your mind. If posting is not your thing, you can interact in other ways, including voting on polls, and unlock options only available to community members.
ccmfans.net is not only for Mariners fans either. Most of us are bonded by our support for the Mariners, but if you are a fan of another club (except the Scum, come on, we need some standards), feel free to join and get into some banter.
As fans still puzzle over Fifa's decision to hand World Cups to Russia and Qatar last week, Nicolas Sarkozy's pressure on Michel Platini to vote for Qatar's 2022 bid is no secret. Apparently France's president wanted Qatar to increase its order for five Airbus 380s.
And as Qatar Airways' chief executive, Akbar al-Baker, announced seven days before the vote: "Definitely we will consider increasing this order." Perhaps those considerations have been made a little easier by events in Zurich.
Germany has similar business imperatives, and just maybe they also influenced its executive-committee member, Franz Beckenbauer, though we cannot be sure. It is known that Beckenbauer is close to Gerhard Schröder, the former Germany chancellor.
Schröder, who is on the board of Gazprom (which is also the €16m-a-year sponsor of Schalke, the big club in Schröder's native region). Maybe Gazprom's Nord Stream Gas Pipeline, linking Germany to Russia under the Baltic Sea, was bringing Moscow an early dividend ahead of its opening next year when Beckenbauer voted for Russia for 2018.
Industrial Germany's thirst for minerals may also have played a part for 2022. Having been the only one of six voters to keep his first-round promise to Australia's 2022 bid, Beckenbauer joined the Qatari bandwagon after Australia's elimination.
This no doubt pleased Germany's current chancellor, Angela Merkel. She is frowning on the hostile takeover bid from Spain's ACS (which in Florentino Pérez just so happens to share a chairman with Real Madrid) for Hochtief, Germany's biggest builder. This Monday, Hochtief issued 7m new shares for ¤400m (£337m), significantly diluting ACS's stake. The buyer of these discounted shares? Why, the state of Qatar.
Perhaps David Cameron and the country he leads missed out last Thursday not only on a World Cup but a lot more besides
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/news/1036201/Beckenbauer-losing-faith-in-FIFA
Beckenbauer losing faith in FIFA
14 December 2010-PA Sport
FIFA Executive Committee member Franz Beckenbauer says he has "limited" faith in FIFA after the way it handled the vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups on December 2, and the way it has acted since then.
Two of the favourites to stage the events, England and Australia, received only two votes and one vote respectively, and Beckenbauer, who was one of the 22 committee members eligible to vote, feels betrayed by FIFA for revealing such statistics.
He says that the ballot should have remained secret and that nobody, not even he, should ever have known how many votes had been cast for each individual candidate, and in each round.
"The Executive Committee was told that neither we nor the public would get to know the precise voting figures," he told Germany's Bild newspaper.
"After each round of voting, we were only told which candidate had been knocked out.
"And then a few hours later, I hear on the radio who had received how many votes.
"My faith in FIFA is limited."
Since it became public knowledge that England and Australia had not even made it through the first round of voting, and that other strong bids from Spain and Portugal and the USA had been overlooked, FIFA has spent more of its time criticising the losers rather than glorifying the winners, according to Beckenbauer.
He had already announced last month that he will be resigning from his post at FIFA in March and the vote has now given him even more reason to walk away.
"I am disappointed with the way FIFA have dealt with the results after the vote," he added.
"They have made a disgrace of the seven defeated nations, particularly England and Australia."
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/spare-the-taxpayer-shun-the-limelight-20101221-194bf.html
Spare the taxpayer, shun the limelight
December 22, 2010
It is advisable to set your price limit before bidding at an auction. Some people get carried away by emotion and pay well over the odds. Which is what the vendor wants.
Australia spent $45 million on its bid to host the FIFA World Cup, which apparently got us one vote. To win we needed 12. We are pretty lucky our government did not go all out because this could have got as expensive as its program to install insulation batts.
I was in the Gulf when the decision was announced. People offered their commiserations over Australia's defeat. But of course they were glad Qatar won it.
Advertisement: Story continues below
Qatar is precisely the kind of place to host a football World Cup. It has plenty of money to build the stadiums, roads and hotels. There won't be any labour disputes or delays of the kind that plagued the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. It will be done to an extravagant budget and finished on time.
Qatar is a major oil producer with about 40 years of reserves to run. Its gas reserves dwarf those of Australia (a pretty mean producer itself) by about 25 times. The labour that will do the construction is mostly imported. Of a population of about 2 million only a minority are Qataris. Along with Liechtenstein, they have the highest per capita income in the world.
Qatar will not put any taxpayers' money into hosting the event. Do you know why? There is no tax in Qatar. The funds will come from the country's oil and gas revenues, which are ultimately owned by His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. He appoints members of his family to hold ministerial positions and they spend the income derived from oil on the likes of football World Cups.
If Qatar wants to spend its income on such an event, we should be grateful and sit back and enjoy it.
When Abu Dhabi decided to stage its formula one race it developed a whole island - Yas Island - with hotels, marinas, permanent grandstands, at an estimated cost of $40 billion. Does that mean that Australia should pay a similar sum to stage its race? Not for a moment. Many Australians will have the chance to go to the oil-rich kingdom and enjoy it. But we do not have a spare $40 billion sitting around - not even for uncommercial projects such as the national broadband network.
There are benefits in promoting tourism to Australia. And the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games can draw in tourists. But I have never believed the claims that they run at a profit. Our best tourism campaign was Paul Hogan throwing another shrimp on the barbie.
The recent visit of Oprah was a piece of sensational public relations. Time will tell whether it boosts visitor numbers. But for a week it put Australia right in the forefront of exposure to the world's largest economy. The coverage was as sympathetic as you could imagine. It had a lot of stereotypes - crocodiles, snakes and the like - but that is what tourists come looking for.
It helps to have our own famous people - stars such as Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe - promoting Australia in these programs, and good on them for doing it. The exposure back to the US market will not do them any damage. But one of our famous people who climbed on the bandwagon should not have been there. She should not have been anywhere near the scene of the Opradulation.
Julia Gillard, as the Prime Minister of Australia, is the person ultimately responsible for sending troops into battle. She must stand up and insist our country is treated with respect in international forums. She is not a support act for a visiting US celebrity. She did not do well. The crowd was embarrassed. It was cringe-making. When previous Australian prime ministers - Harold Holt and John Gorton - got starstruck by the Americans, at least it was for presidents - they did not gush in the presence of TV personalities.
The Roman poet Juvenal lamented the politicians of ancient Rome had cheapened the republic with a policy of "bread and circuses".
The Prime Minister needs to look, well, prime ministerial. The present government is faltering. It should focus on governing. Sound government rather than media spin would give it some respect. Big sporting events are nice - the kind of thing you might do when the basics are covered. But events management is best run by those who have unlimited resources to stage them. Citizen democracies must be careful to use taxpayers' money sparingly and wisely. And the Prime Minister should never, never think she can become a celebrity. If she were any good at that, she would not be in politics.
Peter Costello is a former Liberal treasurer.
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1040265/The-World-Cup-goes-to-court
The World Cup goes to court
Shrewd readers might have picked up that amid all the palaver about FIFA president Sepp Blatter’s floating of the idea of switching the 2022 World Cup from summer to winter that the Qataris have kept their opinions on the matter to themselves, insisting it’s business as usual: that the Cup will go ahead as planned.
Even Asian Football Confederation president and Qatari kingmaker Mohamed bin Hammam, a man who likes to stir the pot, has stuck to the script, telling a British interviewer this week: “Our focus is June, July. We are promising the world that we are going to organise an amazing World Cup in June and July. We are sticking to our promise and that is our final word.”
Now it’s an odd thing, don’t you think? A winter World Cup would save the Qataris a whole lot of trouble.
No need for all those refrigerated stadiums. A more pleasant experience for fans and players alike, as the current Asian Cup, played this month in conducive conditions for football, is proving. No chance of people expiring in the heat. The promise of more tourists and potentially more return for their whopping investment in the grand folly of Qatar 2022.
But the Qataris are letting FIFA do all the running on this because it is FIFA that, according to a highly placed FIFA insider who emailed me this week under the promise of confidentiality, is about to get sued by the Americans if the winter idea gets approval or other nations are invited to co-host the tournament. UEFA president Michel Platini was the latest to suggest this was an option.
The same Gulf States Cup I suggested was a better outcome for all concerned back in December 2009.
Why? Because all World Cup bidders took an undertaking when they officially entered the 2022 bidding contest that they would follow the letter of the law in the Bid Registration documents lodged on March 16, 2009.
Clause 1.2, under the main heading “THE COMPETITIONS”, states: “the following FIFA competitions will be the subject of the Bidding Process governed by this Bid Registration” and “the final competitions of the FIFA World Cup which are scheduled to take place as follows the 21st edition in June and/or July of 2018 and the 22nd edition in June and/or July of 2022.”
Plain as day, which was what FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke said back on December 6.
So Blatter might claim “the executive committee is empowered to change anything in the bidding program” on the basis that FIFA has become accustomed to doing whatever it likes and with not so much as a whiff of complaint from anyone, but taken to court by the determined Americans (possibly joined by the Australians, who are said to be considering their options and should go for it – given they squandered $45.6 million of taxpayer’s money on what was an unfair contest) it would have a hell of a time defending its conduct, just as it did when Mastercard took it to the cleaners to the tune of nearly $100 million in 2007 for breach of contract.
The matter would be heard under Swiss law and were the court to find against FIFA it could be highly costly when it comes to financial damages and compensation.
The biggest impact, though, would be on its credibility, already pummeled by a succession of scandals. It is a situation FIFA and its harried president would well want to avoid.
But they are in the mother of all catch-22s.
As my perspicacious Deep Throat says: “If they acknowledge that giving the WC to Qatar in the summer was a mistake, they can only do one of two things: move it to winter, in which case they'll get sued by the Americans and the Australians, or take it off Qatar altogether (maybe later under a new president), in which case they'll get sued by the Qatari sheikhs, probably for hundreds of millions.”
Not to mention the massive headache they already have over scheduling.
A January World Cup would put FIFA on a collision course with all the major European leagues and even the Winter Olympics.
Can FIFA navigate its way out of this mess? It’s hard to see how. Of course, had they not awarded Qatar the World Cup in the first place they wouldn’t be in this bind and Blatter wouldnt be getting smashed black and blue by the press.
Just how Qatar won the tournament is worthy of an independent commission of enquiry. What is being recorded in official documents is surely not even half the story.
For now we will have to be content with watching how this plays out. It stands to be a legal drama more gripping than any football match.
http://www.theage.com.au/sport/soccer/fresh-world-cup-vote-flagged-20110520-1evx5.html
he president of soccer's governing body has left the door open for a rerun of the contest to host the 2022 World Cup - giving Australia some hope that it may yet have a chance to stage the world's biggest sporting event.
British newspaper The Independent is reporting that an inquiry into corruption in the bidding process could force an unprecedented second vote on who will host the event.
Last December, Arab Emirate Qatar won the right to stage the contest.
Advertisement: Story continues below
FIFA president Sepp Blatter conceded to the Press Association yesterday that there was a groundswell of support "circulating the world" for a new vote of FIFA's executive committee.
FIFA is holding an inquiry into the Sunday Times newspaper's claims of corruption in the bidding process.
Blatter, who is campaigning to be reinstated as president for a fourth term, is running against the Qatari president of the Asian football confederation Mohamed Bin Hammam, who was deeply involved in his nation's bid.
England's Football Association has abstained from voting in that presidential battle, referring to a "well-reported range of issues" about both candidates.
The FA report into corruption in the biddding process for the 2018 World Cup, which England sought, will be delivered next week.
FIFA general secretary Jérôme Valcke and legal director Marco Villige will interview the whistleblower in Zurich, ahead of the FIFA congress to be held in 11 days.
FIFA executive committee members Issa Hayatou and Jacques Anouma deny that they were paid £925,000 ($1.5 million) each to vote for the Middle East state's World Cup bid.
Former FA chairman Lord Triesman alleged impropriety by four other FIFA members – Trinidad & Tobago's Jack Warner, Thailand's Worawi Makudi, Brazil's Ricardo Teixeira and Paraguay's Nicolás Leoz – while he was head of England's 2018 World Cup bid, claiming that they asked for cash or favours.
The announcement of the 2022 hosts was met with shock around the world. Qatar has a population of only 1.6 million and searing temperatures in summer.
Those supporting the decision point out that the World Cup has become a truly global event, with recent events staged in Asia and Africa.
A whistleblower told the Sunday Times that million-dollar-plus bribes had been paid to executive committee members involved in the 2022 vote.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/sport/soccer/fresh-world-cup-vote-flagged-20110520-1evx5.html#ixzz1Msjyu2XY
2022 World Cup bid not over yet: Lowy
Liam Fitzgibbon
November 28, 2011 - 6:24PM
Newly re-elected Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy has hinted he feels Qatar could yet be stripped of hosting rights for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The process of awarding the gulf country the event over the likes of Australia and the US, and the awarding of the 2018 tournament to Russia, has been widely criticised in the past year amid ongoing allegations of corruption within world football's governing body.
Lowy, 81, was formally re-elected for another four years on Monday and revealed his ambitions to continue pushing Australia to becoming a "world class" football nation.
Advertisement: Story continues below over the world talking is about that, the awarding particularly of '22, the state of the FIFA executive committee - all that stuff.
"It's not over. I don't exactly know where it will bounce. The only thing I know is it's not over yet."
While anger lingers over Australia's failed $45 million bid, Lowy said FFA's focus in the coming years would be on strengthening the game domestically and successfully hosting the 2015 Asian Cup.
FFA has also set out ambitious targets for the national team and they are relying on the Socceroos qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil to ensure a set of financial targets.
Despite predicting a surplus in February, the federation posted a loss of $891,000 for the 2010-2011 financial year due to having to rescue several struggling A-League clubs including the now defunct North Queensland Fury.
Among the on-field targets for the Socceroos are to reach the knockout rounds of the 2014 World Cup and challenge for a position inside the top 10 of the FIFA rankings by 2015.
Lowy said among FFA's other biggest challenges was to convert more of the 1.7 million participants in all forms of the sport into supporters, agreeing interest in the national team had softened in recent times.
"I am concerned that Australia's expectations are a little bit too high and that they want us to win all the time and they don't come and follow it as much as they used to," Lowy said.
"The competition is hard. Asia has improved a lot, but we have a coach and a good team and I expect to be there (in 2014) but I expect to get a bit more enthusiasm from the country."
Lowy insisted he had been fully cleared of health problems suffered earlier this year and declared his biggest personal goal to "make the game sustainable."
http://ccmfans.net/board/index.php/topic/957-australias-bid-for-the-2018-or-2022-world-cup/page__st__900
http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/news/1084669/More-Qatar-criticism
A key FIFA reformer has joined the chorus of critics denouncing the decision giving Qatar the 2022 World Cup, adding weight to Australian Frank Lowy's assertion that the issue is not dead and buried.
German football federation president Theo Zwanziger, who is among those heading the clean-up drive of football's governing body, said: "I have never understood how such a small country can be awarded one of the most important sports events in the world, especially as Qatar were in last place on the grid before the decision was made."
Zwanziger, voted onto FIFA's executive committee in June, said he had doubts about whether sporting factors were taken into consideration enough.
"Political interests should not prevail if the fundamentals, the sporting conditions, have been somewhat perverted," he said.
Lowy has hinted he feels Qatar could yet be stripped of hosting rights.
When he was formally re-elected for another four years as Football Federation Australia chairman two weeks ago, he said: "When I came back from that fateful day (after losing the bid) I said 'this is not the last word about awarding the World Cup'.
"Well it wasn't the last word and the last word hasn't been heard yet.
"Don't ask me to elaborate because I don't have a crystal ball."
Australian fans should not get their hopes too high because the nation's $45 million World Cup hosting bid attracted just one vote in Zurich a year ago.
The US garnered eight votes in a ballot that also included Japan and South Korea.
Zwanziger has said previously that questions remain over a leaked email from FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke in which he said now-sacked Asian Football Confederation boss Mohamed Bin Hammam "thought you can buy FIFA as they [Qatar] bought the World Cup".
"I have not forgotten this sentence, this has to be cleared up," Zwanziger said.
"In my opinion the vote for Qatar was decided by some members of the executive committee who are in a very close relationship with their governments, who pushed the political case for Qatar."
The tiny oil-rich state, with a population of less than two million, will be the first Middle Eastern country to host a major sporting event.
The tournament may have to be played during the Middle Eastern winter months of January or February, when the intense heat is at its weakest, meaning the global football calendar may need to be altered.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Sports/...ates-qatar-world-cup-award.ashx#ixzz2JT0nhtKE
PARIS: France Football magazine has raised questions about FIFA’s awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, alleging it was tainted by corruption and collusion involving top figures in the game.
The weekly publication said in its latest edition published Tuesday that the awarding of football’s most prestigious tournament had “a whiff of scandal that begs the only question worth asking: Should the vote be declared null and void?”
To back up its claims, the magazine, which dubbed the affair “Qatargate,” quoted what it said was an internal email in which FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke allegedly said that the tiny Gulf state had “bought the 2022 World Cup.”
Valcke subsequently claimed a misunderstanding and insisted that the tone of the email was “light-hearted.”
France Football also quoted former FIFA media chief Guido Tognoni, who was kicked out of the organization in 2003, as saying he believed there were “strong suspicions” that members were compromised over the 33.75 million euro ($25 million) Qatari bid.
Key figures in making Qatar’s case included the now-banned former Asian football chief Mohammad Bin Hammam, FIFA vice president Julio Grondona of Argentina and Ricardo Teixeira, who quit Brazil’s football federation and FIFA over graft claims.
The magazine also said there was a “secret meeting” at the French presidential palace in Paris on Nov. 23, 2010 – some 10 days before the crucial vote to decide the 2022 competition venue.
Attending were then-President Nicolas Sarkozy, Qatari prince Tamin bin Hamad al-Thani, UEFA president Michel Platini and Sebastien Bazin, representing Paris Saint Germain owners Colony Capital, who at the time were in financial difficulty.
“During this meeting, the question repeatedly came up of a buyout of Paris Saint Germain by the Qataris, an increase in their shareholding of the Lagardere group, the creation of a sports [television] channel to challenge Canal+ – which Sarkozy wanted to weaken – all in exchange for a promise: that Platini did not give his vote to the United States, as he intended to, but to Qatar.”
PSG were eventually bought by Qatar Sports Investment in June 2011. BeIn Sport, a subsidiary of Doha-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera, launched last year and took the television rights to show live French football from Canal+.
According to France Football, “the Americans would be odds-on favorites to be handed the 2022 World Cup in the event that Qatar’s designation was withdrawn or sidelined.”
Competition organizers were quoted as saying: “We won the World Cup 2022 bid by respecting from beginning to end the highest ethical and moral standards, such as they were defined in the rules and regulations.”
FIFA told AFP it had no comment to make on the subject.
But a spokesman pointed out that its ethical commission, headed by former U.S. prosecutor Michael Garcia, said last Thursday that he was to conduct a “wide-ranging inquiry” into the awarding of the 2018 edition to Russia and 2022 to Qatar.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Sports/Football/2013/Jan-30/204258-french-magazine-debates-qatar-world-cup-award.ashx#ixzz2JWZu4F8o
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
if i remember correctly i think that head of FIFA's ethics commity is our very own les murryMassive news if true ... from the independent in England..
http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...ifa-strips-country-of-tournament-9507194.html
Qatar will not be able to mount a legal challenge to Fifa if football's governing body strips it of the right to stage the 2022 World Cup. As controversy continues to rage over allegations of corruption surrounding the bid process, it has emerged that Qatar agreed to sign away its right to take any form of legal action against Fifa when it made its original tender for the tournament in 2010.
The Independent on Sunday can also reveal that a mechanism is available to football's governing body to order a new vote whereby infringements of its code of ethics are cited.
Qatar, which denies all corruption allegations, is now facing a major fight to hang on to the World Cup, and the subject is certain to feature strongly when Fifa holds its congress in Sao Paulo on Wednesday, one day before the 2014 World Cup opens.
It had been assumed that one reason Fifa might fail to order a revote for 2012 was fear of legal action by Qatar. But the legal officer of one of the bidding nations told The IoS: "All the bidding countries had to sign a registration document in which they agreed to be bound by Fifa's code of ethics. In a normal contract with an organisation based in Zurich, you would expect the agreement to be subject to Swiss law.
' Qatar’s proposed stadium Qatar’s proposed stadium 'But Fifa's code makes it clear that all disputes are decided by the appeals committee of Fifa's ethics committee. The appeals committee can be taken to the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration in Sport. But this is a special arbitration body for sport, not a court of law.
''So should Fifa decide to have a revote, Qatar cannot take Fifa to a Swiss court. All bidding countries knew they were giving up their legal rights when bidding for the World Cup. But so keen are countries to get the World Cup, they happily agreed to do so."
This did not seem to matter at the time of the bidding as nobody expected to Qatar to win. Since then, the decision has proved so controversial that Fifa hired former US attorney Michael Garcia to investigate both the 2022 vote and the 2018 vote in which Russia beat England. Mr Garcia will complete his report tomorrow, although it will not be submitted to Fifa until next month.
However, this carefully planned Fifa timetable has been jeopardised following extensive revelations that Mohamed Bin Hammam, a Qatari who was then a Fifa vice-president, had allegedly paid bribes totalling £3m to football administrators round the world to influence the vote.
Fair play: Mohamed Bin Hammam Fair play: Mohamed Bin Hammam Mr Hammam was also a member of the Fifa executive that decided on Qatar in preference to the US, Japan and Australia. He has since been banned for life from Fifa for offences not connected with the bid. Qatar World Cup organisers insist that Mr Hammam had nothing to do with their bid and that they scrupulously followed Fifa's code of ethics.
However, according to well-informed sources, Fifa could now use this very code of ethics to deny Qatar the prize. Crucial to such a decision would be clause two of the code. This says: "Officials shall show an ethical attitude when performing their duties. They shall pledge to behave in a dignified manner. They shall behave and act with complete credibility and integrity."
One official from another bidding country, who has given evidence to Mr Garcia, told The IoS: "This is Fifa's version of the FA's catch-all clause of 'bringing the game into disrepute', which has often helped the FA bring charges when there was no specific evidence.
"Fifa could order a revote saying that, while there may be no direct link between Hammam and Qatar, the whole process lacked integrity. And to justify this, Fifa could also use the fact that its own evaluation report said a World Cup in Qatar in the summer when temperatures can rise to 50C was high risk, the only bidding country to be so classified."
Some inkling of Fifa's thinking may emerge on Wednesday when the organisation holds its congress in Sao Paulo. Before the latest revelations, this was expected to be another celebration for Fifa's president, Sepp Blatter, with the 78-year-old announcing that he would serve a fifth term when elections are held next year. However, now there is strong pressure for Uefa to find a candidate who offers a credible alternative to the Swiss.
if i remember correctly i think that head of FIFA's ethics commity is our very own les murry