April 15, 2009Sports of The Times
Obama Lends Weight to World Cup Bid By GEORGE VECSEY
Having shown his deft touch on the basketball court, President Obama is now testing his prowess in the politics of sport.
The president recently sent a video praising Chicago in its bid to hold the 2016 Summer Games. Now he has endorsed the United States’ effort to hold the World Cup of soccer either in 2018 or 2022.
After showing admirable loyalty to his South Side Chicago baseball team, the White Sox, the president might also work up some fealty toward a middle-of-the-table soccer team he once visited, West Ham, from the East End of London. For now, he is taking the big-picture, hands-across-the-sea route.
“As a child, I played soccer on a dirt road in Jakarta, and the game brought the children of my neighborhood together,” the president wrote in a letter that was hand-delivered recently to Joseph S. Blatter, the president of soccer’s world governing body, known as FIFA. Obama was referring to the years from age 6 to 10 that he spent in Indonesia with his mother.
“As a father, I saw that same spirit of unity alive on the fields and sidelines of my own daughters’ soccer games in Chicago,” the president added.
Obama seems to understand the implications of the world’s favorite sport, in the same way he gave early interviews to Arabic newspapers, stopped off in Turkey on his first European trip and held the first Seder in the history of the White House.
“Soccer is truly the world’s sport, and the World Cup promotes camaraderie and friendly competition across the globe,” Obama added in the letter, a part of which was released to The New York Times by the United States Soccer Federation with permission from the White House.
“That is why this bid is about much more than a game,” he added. “It is about the United States of America inviting the world to gather all across our great country in celebration of our common hopes and dreams.”
The president is hoping to influence FIFA when the decision for 2018 and 2022 is made in December 2010, five months after the next World Cup in South Africa. FIFA has committed to Brazil in 2014, meaning that consecutive World Cups could be held in countries without vast modern infrastructure. Theoretically, this would make FIFA more interested in creature comforts and money in 2018 and 2022.
“The support of the president, who is extraordinarily popular around the world, is a huge plus,” Sunil Gulati, the president of the United States federation, said Monday.
Obama is a powerful force, as was shown recently in Chicago when his video impressed inspectors from the International Olympic Committee who were evaluating that city against Tokyo, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro.
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The inspectors may not have known that Obama was among the top 20 percent in predicting the recent national college basketball tournament. And does it matter whether the president has any expertise in soccer?
He has attended games involving his 10-year-old, Malia, in Chicago and in 2003 visited his half sister Auma in London and went to a match at West Ham, in the Premier League. After he was elected president in early November, West Ham invited him to return to Upton Park, but his publicists denied the basic tabloid speculation that he roots for the Hammers, or anybody.
A man that politically astute should know that the claret-and-blue Hammers are an ideal team for a community organizer. Long identified with shipbuilders and dockworkers, West Ham has seen many of its ticket holders move out of the area while local periwinkle shops gave way to halal butcher shops. The club has run clinics to draw neighborhood children from South Asia into their fan base.
(Personal note: I went to West Ham on a cold, damp night in 2003, and the Hammers won in extra time, and the fans left singing their hopeful anthem, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” and a little bit of my American heart stayed with them. I mean, who am I going to root for — Manchester United and its A.I.G. logo?)
Obama very well could identify with an underdog, given the generally shaky performances by the United States in the past five World Cups. The United States does not normally have the stature in soccer that it does in the Olympic movement. But the two go about business in different ways.
After scandals a decade ago, the I.O.C. has developed a transparent bid process, while FIFA’s process is far more opaque. But this could be an advantage if Blatter were influenced by the charisma of President Obama.
The Chicago Olympic committee is hoping that Obama will materialize for the vote in Copenhagen in October the same way Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Vladimir V. Putin helped put London and Sochi, Russia, over the top in recent Olympic votes.
“Any statements he makes — and he is already working in his statements for Chicago — are listened to very, very carefully,” the I.O.C. member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain recently said to The Chicago Tribune.
FIFA knows the United States ran a terrific party in 1994, setting an overall attendance record. Now the highly popular American president has proposed throwing another party. A claret-and-blue scarf would look great on him.
E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/sports/soccer/15vecsey.html?ref=sports
