Dempsey honoured

In a tribute to the late New Zealand football administrator Charles Dempsey, the SA 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee CEO Danny Jordaan recounts the explanation Dempsey gave him for his abstention during the vote for the hosting of the 2006 FIFA World Cup, which resulted in Germany winning the vote. In his book Foul!: The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote Rigging and Ticket Scandals (Harper Collins), Andrew Jennings (see www.transparencyinsport.org) has a slightly different explanation for Dempsey’s no-vote: he argues that Blatter secretly wanted the event to go to Germany and if there was a draw (if Dempsey voted for South Africa), Blatter was facing having to cast his vote. Jennings believes that several ExCo members were bribed to vote for Germany and the only dispute is the amount some of them received.

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It was just a month ago that the OC’s Chief Executive Officer Dr Danny Jordaan met Dempsey at the FIFA Congress in Sydney on May 30 2008, with the two chatting warmly for over half an hour and talking about Dempsey’s famous abstention from the vote to decide the 2006 FIFA World Cup hosts.

New Zealander Dempsey, then a FIFA Executive Member from the Oceania Confederation, had been mandated by Oceania to vote for South Africa, but abstained from voting, with Germany winning the vote 12-11.

“South Africans will always remember Charles Dempsey. I had the opportunity to speak to him in Sydney recently and I thanked him for his support and also invited him to come to South Africa for the World Cup in 2010. I told him he were not angry with him as us South Africans don’t believe in building the future based on the grievances of the past. He was very happy that we embraced him as a friend of the World Cup and he wished us well. The 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa would like to send our sincere condolences to the Dempsey family,” said Dr Jordaan today.

When the two men very cordially met in Sydney, Dempsey said his decision to abstain from the 2006 vote had turned out “for the best”.

“I think it all worked out very well in the end. In hindsight my decision was right for you. It has given you (South Africa) more time to prepare and I think 2010 will be a great World Cup. The second time around (in the vote for 2010) there were no problems. Everybody now feels confident in you. Before that there were a lot of doubting Thomases, but now FIFA are 100% with you and that instills a lot of confidence in the football world. Africa is due a World Cup and I think it will be great,” Dempsey had told Dr Jordaan.

He said at the time of the vote in 2000 he had been under tremendous pressure.

“It was a hellish time. If you had written a script about what happened before that vote, nobody would have believed you. But I didn’t abstain for the reasons people think I did. At the time I was pressurized by a lot of different people. I rang my lawyers and they told me ‘don’t vote, otherwise you will be accused of accepting a bribe. If you don’t vote, nobody can accuse you of anything’. Of course you (South Africa) never bribed me or tried to,” said Dempsey.

Paying tribute to Dempsey, Dr Jordaan said he had played a major role in growing the game of football in Oceania and was a sound administrator.

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