Episode notes
2 December 2010. A windowless conference room inside the Messe Zurich. Twenty-two men, secret paper ballots, two World Cups awarded in a single afternoon. Russia 2018. Qatar 2022. Bill Clinton in the audience expecting the United States to win — and, by his own staff's later account, throwing an ornament at a hotel mirror that evening.
In this episode:
- Round-by-round vote totals for both ballots — including England's two votes for 2018 and Qatar's fourteen-to-eight final-round defeat of the United States
- The bidders in the room: the Triple Crown delegation, Bill Clinton and Morgan Freeman, the Emir of Qatar, Igor Shuvalov standing in for Vladimir Putin
- The vote-trading allegation between Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 — what the Garcia investigation found, and what the destroyed Russian computers prevented it finding
...