David Conn: Hypocrisy kicks in as Blatter's former suitors turn hostile

Football Association and Government join the critics after pressing doomed 2006 World Cup bid on Fifa president

Never has the global village settled down for its four-yearly football fête with so much bitterness and rancour plaguing the organising committee. The English representatives, led by Adam Crozier, the Football Association's chief executive, have loudly condemned Fifa's re-election of their president, Sepp Blatter, this week as "disgraceful", saying trust in the world game's governing body had "fundamentally broken", and scoffing that Blatter should "look up the word 'transparency' in a dictionary".

The Sports Minister, Richard Caborn, effectively joined the FA in backing Issa Hayatou, of Cameroon, saying before the election: "We want to see a full inquiry into the serious allegations of corruption and financial cover-up which have been made against Mr Blatter and Fifa." Caborn added: "If football's world governing body wants to be respectable, then they have to be more open and transparent."

The FA's executive director, David Davies, even hinted after Blatter's victory that the FA might support a move, long whispered in Fifa corridors, of a breakaway led by Uefa, the governing body of European football, from the sport's world governing body that it has relentlessly tried but so far failed to overhaul.

Yet memories have to be very short if people are to be too impressed by this British righteous indignation. Only 18 months ago, the FA and the Government were still shamelessly schmoozing Fifa and this same president Blatter, spending £10m, over £3m from each of the FA, Premier League and even the National Lottery, in a doomed attempt to charm Blatter and his delegates into bestowing the next World Cup on England. In summer 1999, Prince Charles was somewhat haplessly roped in to the lavish entertainment of Fifa dignitaries, who were treated to all-round pampering and flights around England's finest football facilities.

Blatter was welcomed into Downing Street in November 2000 where our Prime Minister, who had appointed a personal envoy to the World Cup Bid, the former Sports Minister Tony Banks, pressed his World Cup claims upon the Fifa president.

Had the English bid been successful, one wonders whether our rulers would have backed so vehemently the Fifa secretary-general, Michel Zen-Ruffinen, in his explosive allegations of misconduct by Blatter, and the assertion by the Fifa vice-president, David Will of Scotland, who headed the audit committee's investigation into Fifa's finances, that the books have been cooked and Fifa is effectively insolvent. Significantly Germany, who did win the 2006 games, voted for Blatter rather than Hayatou. One Government source said this week that had England been successful it would all have been different, and that the Government would "inevitably" have been arm-twisted into paying to rebuild Wembley, the FA project which has stalled amid Parliamentary revelations of improper tendering and lack of transparency by the FA's company.

This week Tony Banks, while calling for Fifa to "clean up its act", maintained that the Government and the FA were right to mount the bid, even though, he accepted, rumours about alleged misconduct by Blatter were commonplace at the time, and Fifa was even less transparent.

"There were plenty of whispers at the time," Banks confirmed, "but no senior official had openly made the allegations as Zen-Ruffinen has now. If they had we'd have had to review our bid." But he also said: "You have to deal with reality: we believe there is corruption in football in this country, but we still enjoy the game... The greater good was served by bidding for this wonderful tournament."

Now that the scandal and infighting is to be temporarily drowned by a thrill, worldwide, at football actually being played, it is clearer than ever why the Government was prepared to support a tacky, expensive campaign to woo a discredited governing body. The tournament has, simply, become enormous. The financial collapses of both the marketing company, ISL, and television rights distributor, Kirch, had dumped another huge administrative mess on Fifa's doorstep, but people will nevertheless come together in every corner of the earth to watch this World Cup. Its record breaking "reach", to 215 countries, will be transmitted along with the beer, electronics, fast food and leisurewear brand names of 15 multinational sponsors.

Kirch, the German media giant, went into administration last month with debts of over £4bn, but not before the World Cup rights were protected by farming them out to a Swiss subsidiary, KirchSport. That company, and Fifa, have both confirmed that Kirch have met the guaranteed price of 1.3bn Swiss francs (£568m) for this World Cup, agreed when Kirch and ISL bought the TV rights in 1996. The 215 watching countries exceeds the 196 which watched France '98 – and, incidentally, the number of nations in the United Nations, which is 189. KirchSport's list of confirmed countries already runs to 12 tightly typed pages, with several African countries yet to confirm. It is, with very few exceptions, simply a list of all the countries in the world, from Slovakia to Somalia, Chad to China. Unlike the Bundesliga, pay TV and other loss-making Kirch millstones, the World Cup has been profitable; the company itself will not release the figures but the journal TV Sports Markets calculated the confirmed deals earlier this year at £1.5bn for Kirch. This, though, includes pre-payments for the 2006 World Cup and it is not yet clear whether Kirch will make money on that tournament or indeed whether they will retain the rights at all, given the company's insolvency.

Here, with the World Cup protected for terrestrial television, BBC and ITV bought the rights to both 2002 and 2006 for £160m, which splits £105m for 2006 and £55m for this one, less because of the time difference which sees games broadcast in the early mornings. Dominic Coles, head of sports rights and finance director of the BBC, said the World Cup, with the Olympics, were now incomparably the world's largest television events. "There is virtually no other happening, except for a national disaster, which can so unite the world around television sets," he said. "Royal weddings no longer get close."

BBC and ITV are, though, nervous about the security of their 2006 rights, which could yet be sucked into Kirch's administration and lost. In an ironic reverse of the Football League's ITV Digital calamity, the broadcasters have no guarantee that Fifa will honour the deal if Kirch loses the rights. In Japan and Korea, BBC and ITV will be seeking from Fifa, effectively, the kind of parent guarantee which Carlton and Granada would not provide as backing for the Football League in its deal with their joint venture, ITV Digital.

The collapse last year of ISL, Fifa's long-term marketing "partner", formed in 1982 by the former adidas magnate Horst Dassler, a close ally of João Havelange, Blatter's predecessor and mentor, has been messier. Fifa quickly formed its own marketing company to sell the sponsorship for this World Cup, ringing up an impressive – or depressing, depending on your viewpoint – list of 15 multinationals, among them adidas, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Mastercard, Yahoo. They have paid around £140m – £9m each – to burn their brands into the world's consciousness over the next four weeks by the incomparably effective vehicle of football, globalisation's sport of choice.

But the ISL insolvency has been central to the pressure on Blatter, particularly from Will, who claims the loss to Fifa is over £300m, rather than the £37m which Blatter has claimed following a legal settlement with ISL's liquidators on 10 May.

Blatter at first agreed to an investigation by Fifa's audit committee, then suspended it, a key act which has provoked the, mainly European, calls for more transparency. Will also claims that the generally healthy financial position declared by Fifa last week, showing "liquidity" of 411m Swiss francs (£179m), is sleight of hand, because it counts £300m borrowed against future TV sales as income now. Blatter, in an open letter before his crushing victory this week, denounced Will's claim as "misrepresentation" and "sensationalising".

Blatter's charm offensive has been effectively buttressed by Fifa's distribution of money to all football associations, however poor, small and unaccountable, a total of 530m Swiss francs (£231m), in the last four years. That policy guaranteed him more votes than Uefa – massively wealthy by comparison to the other confederations – could marshall for their candidate.

This, in summary, is a story of greed, financial fog, global branding, allegations of corruption and vote-rigging, corporate collapse and bitter political infighting. So much for the Fifa family. Now the world is hunkering down to watch the show.

davidconn@freeuk.com