The case for a replay

摘要

Ever since 2010, when Qatar was chosen to host the 2022 World Cup, there have been suspicions about how one of the world's least suitable football venues succeeded in snagging the sport's greatest tournament. So revelations published on June 1st by the Sunday Times, a British newspaper, of e-mails detailing lavish campaigning by Mohamed bin Hammam, a disgraced former fifa vice-president from the tiny, hot and scorching Gulf state, shocked, but did not surprise. Football's tarnished world governing body is now under pressure to re-run the bidding process-pressure that on past form its 78-year-old president, the ineffably complacent Sepp Blatter, will try to resist. Even an operator as wily as Mr Blatter, who suggested last month that he intends to run for a fifth four-year term at the head of fifa, will need all his backroom political skills to sidestep the outrage. Though there is no suggestion that he is personally corrupt, it is now clear that he has presided over what many people in football regard as a sewer of dodgy dealing.