FIFA bans Harold Mayne-Nicholls for seven years. Does his punishment fit the crime?

Harold Mayne-Nicholls has been banned by FIFA from all football activity for seven years. He did not have a vote in the 2018/2022 World Cup bidding process. 

He is alleged to have sought a place for his son and nephew at Doha’s no-expense-spared Aspire Academy – one much favoured by travelling teams for training camps, including Australian teams – from the Director of the Academy, Andreas Bleicher. Harold did this at a time he was responsible for the technical inspections of the nine bidders for 2018 and 2022 – a technical inspection which the Australian Bid was told repeatedly by its consultants didn’t count for anything anyway, as none of the voters were likely to read it. 

If there is anything more to this case, it is not known. You can read more about it here from Andrew Jennings, and James Corbett’s analysis of it here. 

Harold Mayne-Nicholls’ technical assessments contained nothing surprising. 

Amongst other things, he concluded that it is too hot in Qatar in June for a World Cup tournament – an assessment vindicated by FIFA’s decision to move the 2022 tournament to November/December, notwithstanding the stadium cooling technology available to the Qatari’s. He also concluded that the two countries which were ‘World Cup ready’ in terms of their capacity to host were England and USA. 

The appropriateness of the seven-year penalty can be put no better than the tweet (below) from James Corbett. (Sources suggest new FIFA Ethics chief, Cornel Borbely, sought a nine-year ban). 

Back in November last year, I wrote – in relation to FIFA – that we should “pull up a chair, take out the popcorn, and see what happens next.” How right that was.

By the way, you can also learn more about Harold Mayne-Nicholls from his speech to the #NewFIFANow meeting in Brussels in January.