Rome Wasn't Built in a Day, Chapter D; When I get to know you better

The sacking of Alf Ramsey as England manager in 1974 brought someone with very different ideas into the job, and it didn't go terribly well.

d. When I get to know you better

Sir Alf Ramsey wasn’t the only person connected to the Football Association who’d find himself out of a job in the summer of 1974. The previous decade and a half’s missteps as the head of FIFA caught up with the organisation’s congress during the World Cup finals. Stanley Rous’s enthusiastic support for apartheid South Africa had not been forgotten, and neither had the perception that the 1966 finals had been biased against South American teams, or the fact that practically every nation in Asia and Africa had boycotted them.

It has been subsequently argued that Rous’s views were primarily influenced by his overwhelming desire to keep sport and politics completely separate. The problem for Rous was that this couldn’t really be done any more. Strict political impartiality was considered a form of partiality in itself in the post-colonial world. His desire to maintain the status quo, which often seemed to transcend all other considerations, came to feel increasingly like a series of self-owns.

His rival for the top FIFA job had been keeping himself busy. As the son of a wealthy Brazilian arms dealer, Joao Havelange wasn’t easy to characterise as an ‘outsider’, but he did keep himself busy, visiting eighty countries in the run-up to the vote. He promised investment in stadiums, infrastructure improvements, greater representation at world football’s showpiece event, and a tipping of the balance of power within the global game away from Europe.