Views Not News

Fifa’s inspectors arrived to assess our bid to stage the 2018 World Cup last week.

Had they turned up this weekend, getting about our travel disrupted capital and then the rest of the country might have scuppered the bid before it had even started.

Fresh from their inspection trip to Moscow where the Fifa officials were treated to a red-carpeted welcome by holiday-interrupted Vladimir Putin, who was at Downing Street to kick-start the England bid and impress Fifa at the crucial moment: Nick Clegg, a tennis and skiing fan. A posh substitute, basically. And one who declared our bid as ‘Unbeatable’ which you’re not supposed to do as that rubbishes the opposition. Game, set and match.

How is it possible that three such fabulously important people as David Cameron, Prince William (as well as being royal is also the FAs’s president) and – really, really unbelievable – national treasure David Beckham be either on holiday or out of the country at such a time as this?

“It was just a technical visit” is what we’re told. Nothing important. Just a chance to check the grounds and make sure they’re actually there. Kick the seats. Tread the grass. Just like it all appears to be on TV, that is. So meeting all the big knobs wasn’t that important. Anyway, Ambassadors Rooney, Ferdinand and Capello turned up at Wembley to smile and kick a ball about. Let’s hope Rooney minded his ‘f’s and ‘c’s which were so evident in his World Cup performance.

But the really amazing thing about this story is that they actually went by tube – and made it – to Wembley. Did they have to buy their own Oyster cards?

Of the last 14 events staged there, seven have been affected by transport problems. Fulham have experienced problems in three of their last seven fixtures; Chelsea’s last eight have been hit four times. Twickenham (I know it’s not football) has suffered four times out of ten and Lord’s (I know it’s now not cricket!) has been affected by seven closures during its last 13 tests. I wonder what the betting was on that?

So let’s take Fifa to Wembley by tube…? Aaaargh…who could’ve dreamed that up?!! Couldn’t we have taken the officials by limo and said that’s the way everyone in England travels when they go to a footie match? Shown them a few ladettes out on the town in their pink stretch-limos necking vodka mid-afternoon and singing Ingerland through the open windows as proof? Where’s their imagination?

Everyone knows these top guys from Fifa know nothing about ordinary folk. Besides being treated like royalty (despite their revolution, comrade) in Russia and kings in Qatar on their recent bid inspection visits, they stay in galaxy-starred accommodation for the most part, insulated from the hoi-polloi. Apart from having to shake hands with the odd oick of a rags-to-riches footballer, they’ve have never met a properly normal person. I’m betting (along with the rest of the Pakistani touts) that they would have bought this.

I’m also betting that the real reason Pakistan’s final innings collapsed so ignominiously on Saturday was that they knew that if the match strayed into ‘rush hour’, what with it being a Bank Holiday Sunday the next day and all that, that the usual weekend engineering works and line closures and upgrade works and all the other guff that spews out of TfL for inconveniencing the entire population of London (but only at weekends when people don’t have to go to work) would mean they’d never have made it back to their hotel.

Don’t just take my word for it. Take That, Coldplay, Oasis they’ve all suffered from tube closures and engineering works when they played at Wembley. Ditto O2 too. More than 50% of its biggest gigs have been buggered due to the Jubilee Line upgrades. There’s more but this is getting dull.

While we don’t have 60-mile traffic jams in one place as was reported in China last week, what about nationwide and on a normal Bank Holiday weekend? Course we do. Road closures, engineering works, rail problems are the norm. It’s bad enough that business suffers every day but why do we put up with it every weekend as well?

And it seems the problem is not limited to the capital or England, generally. My local council (Wandsworth) insists on sending out refuse collection trucks which make the morning rush congestion problems ten times worse. Just wants to get in on the act, I guess.

Is it just me or is everything really crap? Come on England!