US Makes FIFA World Cup Bid Presentation for 2022 Games; Final Voting is Revealed Thursday Morning

Landon Donovan addresses the FIFA Executive Committee, who will vote on Thursday morning US time to decide who will host the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups.

“The world of the world cup is the world we want to live in,” said actor Morgan Freeman as he opened US Soccer’s address to the FIFA Executive Committee. The same committee of 22 men will decide early Thursday morning U.S. time who will host both the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups. “To us, the FIFA World Cup—32 nations coming together to live by 17 rules, with the rest of the planet cheering alongside them—is in many ways a vision of paradise on Earth.”

Freeman’s smooth tones were polished but he did have an awkward moment when he skipped a page of his presentation and then had to back up and start over until he could transition into the page he missed.

Freeman then transitioned into a video message from US President Barack Obama, who started his address off by saying, “FIFA has given the American people an extraordinary opportunity. To welcome the world to our shores as host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. It would be an incredible honor.”

Landon Donovan then took the podium and may have been the surprise of the night. He was quite eloquent and told his story of attending a game at the ’94 World Cup. “It started in 94, when FIFA allowed us the honor of hosting the World Cup. I was only 12 years old then, but after watching Argentina and Romania play in the Rose Bowl, a dream was born in me.”

During Donovan’s presentation a video was played of his game-winning goal against Algeria that put the US into the round of 16. The video played with Ian Darke’s call and the viral video of fans reacting from across the US played next to it. When the video ended and the spot light focused back on Donovan he sighed and said, “wow,” still clearly moved by the scene.

Sunil Gulati, President of US Soccer then presented charts, graphs and a very sophisticated PowerPoint-like presentation that was clearly aimed at the committee and not necessarily what would be popular with the general viewing audience who were watching via live streaming through FIFA’s web site. Gulati kept hammering home that the US did not need to build an infrastructure and therefore would have an unprecedented amount of time [12 years] to prepare and create the best FIFA World Cup ever.

Former US President Bill Clinton closed things out by complimenting all the countries’ bids but explained why he thought the US should win the right to host the 2022 games.

“I tell everyone that maybe America’s best claim to this World Cup is that we have the only nation you can put the World Cup that can guarantee that no matter who makes the finals we can fill a stadium with home nation rooters,” said Clinton explaining the diversity of the United States.

But Clinton seemed to ramble a bit and his message got very long. In fact so long he went 6 minutes over the allotted 30 minutes time that each country was allowed to make their presentation.

Japan, Qatar, the Korean Republic and Australia all made presentations on Wednesday for the 2022 games with Qatar the surprise of all the presentations. However impressive, some major hurdles would have to be overcome if the tiny country were to host the games.  You can view all the presentations here.

Thursday
Belgium/Netherlands, Spain/Portugal, England and Russia will give their final 30-minute presentations to the FIFA Executive Committee at FIFA House for the 2018 games. Experts are saying England has seemed to gain momentum and are looking to be the favorite.

The schedule for the presentations, with times listed in Zurich (local)/CT are:

Thursday, Dec. 2
9 a.m. / 2 a.m.  – Belgium/Netherlands
10 a.m. / 3 a.m. – Spain/Portugal
11 a.m. / 6 a.m. – England
12 p.m. / 7 a.m. – Russia

All those presentations can be watched live streaming via FIFA.com.

Voting
Following the presentations, each of the 22 FIFA Executive Committee members will vote for a selected host nation for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups. The voting process could take several rounds before winners are decided as a majority of 12 votes are required to secure the bid. After the secret ballots are tallied, FIFA President Joseph S. (Sepp) Blatter will announce the winners.

The announcement is expected at approximately 4 p.m. local (9 a.m. CT). FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter will open the envelopes to reveal the names of the winners before the live audience in the exhibition center and across the world.

How to Follow: The event will be carried live on ESPN, ESPN Deportes, Fox Soccer Channel, FOX Deportes, CNN International and Univision, as well as on fifa.com.

US Soccer has put together an explanation of how the voting works:

THE VOTING PROCESS
The FIFA Executive Committee, chaired by President Joseph “Sepp” Blatter, approved the voting process to determine the hosts of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and 2022 FIFA World Cup during its meeting held in Zurich on Oct. 28 and 29. The voting will take place at Messe Zurich on Thursday, Dec. 2, and the process will be as follows:

•The 2018 vote will take place first, followed by the vote for 2022. The vote will be by secret ballot and all eligible members of the FIFA Executive Committee can vote in both ballots.
•To win the right to host the competition, a bidder must obtain an absolute majority (50% + 1) of the votes of the FIFA Executive Committee members present.
•In the event of a tie when only two bidders remain, the FIFA President will have the casting vote.
•For any voting round in which an absolute majority is not achieved, the bidder with the lowest number of votes will not progress to the next voting round.
•If there is a tie for the lowest number of votes in any round, an intermediate voting round will be conducted to determine which of the tied bidders does not progress.
•When the final decision on the host has been taken, the result will be put in two envelopes and handed over to the FIFA President for the announcements.