Thought it could happen, but I didn’t think it would. (See: yesterday’s item.)

Fifa went all weird today, voting for two countries to stage the 2018 World Cup and 2022  World Cup … that certainly were not the most fit candidates to do so.

They would be Russia and Qatar, respectively.

When the winners ought to have been England and the U.S.

Where did the ought-to-have-wons go wrong?

Actually, I said I thought Spain-Portugal would win in 2018. Mostly because anyone who doesn’t actually live in England knows that Fifa, and world soccer, doesn’t like England or its league. Or the way its officials and media tend to lecture the rest of the world about soccer. That whole “Masters of the Game” thing. (And no, I can’t believe Sepp Blatter actually went along with that Chinese vanity that they somehow invented the game.)

England deserved the 2018 World Cup. An airtight bid. Infrastructure in place, easy to move around, guaranteed sellouts, best fans in the world and a time zone conducive to high TV ratings from California to, oh, the Middle East.

The U.S. deserved the 2022 World Cup … mostly because the other four bidders didn’t. Japan and South Korea just did 2002, Australia isn’t really a soccer country and it would be a TV problem and Qatar is a tiny country with horrible summer weather (trust me) and has never even played in a World Cup.

I think England lost because no one likes them (first eliminated!) and that was exacerbated by the news reports out of the country in the run-up to the Fifa executive committee voting about corruption inside the system.

I believe America lost (though it at least made the final two) for several reasons.

–Fifa people know the country doesn’t care all that much. That leaves Fifa with marginal leverage if something weird happens with the bid. “Hey, we’ll take it away!” “Go ahead. See if we care!”

–Fifa just wanted to step outside the box. Russia and Qatar … that’s outside the box. That’s outside sanity, too, but there you are.

–And a side-effect of not caring (above)? It’s hard to imagine the U.S. bid team doing anything, oh let’s say special for the voters. Nothing overt. Nothing even implied. All a 2022 World Cup would do is smash attendance records and make Fifa (the entity) a lot of money, but what would it do for the executive committee members? Nothing.

Then you have Russia and Qatar.

Russia, at least, is a genuine soccer country. Nice domestic league. Has had some success in the World Cup. Knows the game, likes it. And it had never hosted. That’s a big stretch of the planet that Russia covers. But it’s a massively large country, and getting around will be difficult, and it’s not clear they have a functioning service industry.

And Qatar? Where to being. The Qataris like soccer, even if they’re not very good at it. There’s that. But they mostly have lots and lots of money. All that oil money sloshing around.

Russia probably will do anything Fifa asks them to do. Qatar certainly will.

I believe Fifa likes that influence into events. It would not have that in England or the U.S., so why reward those guys?

And one more thing: We still are at a point in history where the U.S. is unlikely to win any of these major events. The country just isn’t popular around the world. It isn’t. Get out and sniff around. Nobody likes No. 1, especially when it’s been fighting little wars hither and yon for a while now.

So, I can’t say I’m really surprised. I actually can’t even say I’m disappointed, because World Cup, no World Cup … not that big a deal in the States. England? Now they have reason to be agitated. They care a lot. In the offices of The National here in Abu Dhabi, the Brits were seething all night.

(Which reminds me: I wonder how many ministers are sitting around in the UAE thinking, today, “we have more money, more people, more tourist attractions, more cities, more hotels, more space than Qatar; all we lacked was the vision to go out and try! That could have been us and, clearly, it could have been.)

Anyway, here we go. Russia is more likely to not get things quite right (and they’re less than eight years from having to do this thing) … and Qatar is more likely to not solve its issues involving cultural chasms beteween the West and its quite conservative society.

Anyway, losers, there’s always 2026!