The Mail on Sunday May Cost England the 2018 World Cup

A Calculated Sting

The long lens of a professional photographer’s camera tells its own story. As Lord Triesman made his now infamous comments, it was clear this was no accidental leak but a deliberate and calculated sting. The Mail on Sunday’s kiss-and-tell story, published yesterday, has almost certainly delivered the final blow to England’s already ill-starred bid for the 2018 World Cup.

Wrapped in the threadbare cloak of “public interest”, the story detailed private remarks Triesman made concerning the Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian bids. The former FA chairman now has a simple choice. If he possesses any evidence to substantiate his claims, he must refer it to FIFA immediately. If not, a clear and unequivocal apology to the bidding teams is the only honourable course of action. Triesman himself acknowledged the situation was untenable, using the word “entrapment” in his FA resignation statement, a term that feels entirely valid.

But the real story is not Triesman’s comments. It is the wretched tabloid culture that mixes moral sermonising with behaviour that is morally base, all to pursue political agendas and shift newspapers.

The Blame Game

The Mail on Sunday’s sister paper, the Daily Mail, has shown no contrition for running a story that may well have ruined England’s World Cup chances for the foreseeable future. Instead, it has engaged in a laughable attempt to deflect blame. One of its columnists, Martin Samuel, wrote of Triesman’s “salacious fall in a Sunday newspaper” without mentioning that the newspaper in question was his own employer’s Sunday edition. The paper’s headline, “The Woman Who Could Cost England The 2018 World Cup”, was a masterpiece of irony, considering the five-figure sum they reportedly paid her for a story other tabloids had turned down. The paper could not even decide who wrote the piece, with the byline changing twice on its website before settling on the anonymous “Daily Mail Reporter”.

The attempt to shift responsibility onto one opportunist individual has spectacularly backfired. The article has attracted over 1,300 comments from readers, the overwhelming majority contemptuous of the Mail’s methods. Many have declared they will never buy the newspaper again, with some even calling for a boycott.

A Long Time Coming

This attack was not an isolated incident. Lord Triesman has been persona non grata with the Premier League and its allies in the press ever since he delivered a speech heavily critical of the league’s culture of debt. Since then, newspapers have thrown criticism at him with gusto, hoping some of it would stick, regardless of its substance. Perhaps the right-wing press truly is in the pocket of the Premier League. Or perhaps the very idea of a Labour peer holding any position of power was simply too much for them to bear. Whatever the motivation, they were happy to stretch the straw man of “public interest” to its breaking point to oust him.

Comeuppance

For once, it is pleasing to see the Mail group of newspapers receiving a measure of their own medicine, with criticism coming from the supposed safety of their own readership. Numerous Facebook groups have sprung up dedicated to boycotting the Mail, while others suggest emailing the paper’s advertisers. Readers are being encouraged to complain to the Press Complaints Commission, though with the Mail’s own Paul Dacre as its chairman, whether anything will come of it remains an open question.

An apology from the Mail seems unlikely, and any that does appear will be a hollow exercise in face-saving.

The damage is done. The England 2018 bid was already on a knife-edge, and recovery from this seems impossible. The very papers that revelled in this trash will soon travel to South Africa for the World Cup finals next month. Should England perform well, their bosses will no doubt jump back on the bandwagon, declaring themselves the greatest patriots of all. Their cover, however, has been blown. The Mail on Sunday has exposed itself as an organisation willing to sacrifice a World Cup on home soil to pursue its own seedy agenda. What possible justification could any genuine football supporter have for reading such contemptible rags now?