Bob Mackin
For the second time in Canada, the FIFA Congress is April 30 at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
Previously, 50 years ago in Montreal during the 1976 Olympics. Halfway between World Cups in Germany and Argentina.
This edition is the first event of North America’s World Cup festival. Some 1,600 delegates from 211 member nations and territories at the annual soccer governance meeting.
Inside the Vancouver Convention Centre, host of the 76th FIFA Congress. (Mackin)
A few words about Vancouver
For newcomers, welcome and behold the North Shore peaks and their melting snow.
At sea level, look closely, you might see a whale. Beyond the yellow sulphur pyramids, the twin “cans” of the North Shore Wastewater Treatment Plant. Should’ve cost $700 million and opened in 2020, but it’s on the way to $4 billion in 2030. The politicians in power are in no hurry to assign blame.
The FIFA Congress is a “security event,” according to the B.C. RCMP’s assistant commissioner, John Brewer. Expect street closures around the convention centre and police motorcades hither and yon. But there is no dedicated police force at Canada’s biggest port. Disbanded in 1997 and never replaced.
A city known for high-priced real estate, casinos (there is even one beside World Cup stadium B.C. Place called Parq) and fentanyl. Australian criminologist John Langdalecoined the term “Vancouver Model.”
Speaking of Parq Casino, the group that tried to stop it was called Vancouver, Not Vegas. Fans of Major League Soccer’s Vancouver Whitecaps are adopting that as their rallying cry, hoping, before it’s too late, that someone local buys out media-shy owner Greg Kerfoot and/or strikes a deal with the NDP government that runs the stadium. Otherwise, the club could move to Sin City.
Now, about FIFA
When the Women’s Under-19 World Championship came to neighbouring Burnaby in 2002, Sepp Blatter (remember him?) took time out for a helicopter ride to real estate developer Jack Poole’s Mission ranch for a barbecue.
Poole headed the successful bid for Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics.
Four years later, Trinidad and Tobago’s smooth-talking Jack Warner came to inspect Swangard Stadium ahead of the men’s 2007 Under-20 World Cup.
CONCACAF president Warner had a lot to say when this reporter crossed the pitch with him. He downplayed the investigation into his ticket scalping, dismissed players on his country’s national team as “greedy” for seeking fair pay and commended the Canadian Soccer Association for suspending three women’s national team players in a dispute with management.
“You must always do what is right, not what is popular,” Warner said, while standing by mildly amused Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan.
Blatter returned to Vancouver in 2010. So did his predecessor, Joao Havelange, the most-senior member at the International Olympic Committee’s meetings in the Westin Bayshore.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak and sport minister Vitaly Mutko were there. So was the future Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Oh, to have been a fly on the wall!
Before the end of the year, Blatter shocked the world of sport by naming Russia the 2018 host and Qatar for 2022.
Two years later, CONCACAF brought the London 2012 women’s qualifying tournament to B.C. Place — the eight-night, eight-nation event drew more than 97,000.
Chuck Blazer (centre) at the CONCACAF Women’s Olympic Qualifying final in B.C. Place Stadium. (Canada Soccer)
FIFA held a conference at the Sheraton Wall Centre about the previous year’s Women’s World Cup in Germany.
The top FIFA official this time? New York-based, executive committee member Chuck Blazer. The larger-than-life Trump Tower-dweller turned whistleblower.
Because of him, Warner quit to avoid an investigation into buying votes to support Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam’s bid to unseat Blatter.
“My role in that was like the ring of a bell,” Blazer told this reporter “People recognize there are sanctions that will be meted out if they violate those rules. It was a very good example of how it works.”
The world later learned he was an FBI informant who wore a wiretap to collect evidence.
The tournament, however, was overshadowed by the murder in the host hotel’s lobby restaurant of gangster Sandip Duhre. One of the three men convicted was Rabih Alkhalil, the 2022 jail escapee arrested last year in Qatar.
Sepp Blatter sent a video greeting to a FIFA meeting in Vancouver during the 2015 Women’s World Cup. (Mackin)
The biggest pre-2026 FIFA event in the city: the Canada 2015 Women’s World Cup.
They even built an office for Blatter at B.C. Place. Alas, he never used it.
Blatter did not travel, for fear of arrest, after the corruption crackdown against seven FIFA officials during the 65th FIFA Congress in Zurich on May 27.
FIFA Women’s World Cup Canada 2015 chair Victor Montagliani. (Mackin)
Blatter sent a video greeting to the FIFA meetings in Vancouver. African soccer boss Issa Hayatou awarded the trophy to the victorious Americans at the B.C. Place final, the climax of a tournament held, controversially, on artificial turf.
In 2016, the FIFA shakeup thrust the man who chaired the organizing committee, Victor Montagliani, into a new role as CONCACAF’s president and a FIFA vice-president. Montagliani positioned himself as a reformer. During this World Cup cycle, Montagliani is the right-hand man to president Gianni Infantino.
An insurance executive from working class Burnaby who played futsal for Canada, Montagliani enjoyed a $3 million-a-year salary in 2024. He resides in a $6.2 million mansion in West Vancouver’s posh West Bay.
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