We were, in fact we were earmarked for a quarter final if we'd got the bid. I was friends with someone quite connected with it back then (2008/2009) who told me a lot back then. Sadly he died a few years ago, otherwise I'd get more info to let you know, but back then they were really confident of getting the World Cup, but didn't take FIFA's corruption into account. Newcastle actually were close to missing out then, as their bid wasn't very good. The Sunderland bid was a wide ranging one which tied in Middlesbrough, South Tyneside, Darlington, Hartlepool and Durham. Hotels like Lumley Castle, Ramside Hall and Seaham Hall were included as potential bases, with Rockcliffe Hall, The Academy of Light and Durham University along with others as possible training venues. There was other stuff as well, transport, media, VIP and corporate stuff that made it impressive and had us included right pretty much straight away along with London, Manchester and Birmingham. Newcastle had to come alongside the Sunderland bid or they risked missing out to Hull or Derby. The initial Newcastle bid was very Newcastle centric and didn't cover as many other factors as other bids. When they paired up with our bid it became a combined North Eastern bid and that was when Hull, Leicester and Derby missed out. If we'd been successful, Sunderland, Newcastle and Leeds would have formed one "area" with 2 groups allocated to the three venues. There would have been 4 geographical "areas" with 3 venues in each, each area having 2 Groups. Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield another "area", Birmingham, Plymouth and Bristol another, Wembley, Nottingham and Milton Keynes another, though other venues in London were there (along with the Etihad and Southampton) in case Milton Keynes/Plymouth/Bristol were removed. Each area having two groups between the three venues. Sunderland, Manchester, Birmingham and Wembley were earmarked for quarter finals (Old Trafford and Wembley getting semi finals) with last 16 matches allocated between 10 of the 12 venues (Plymouth and Milton Keynes definitely dropping out after the first round). Some venues might seem strange, but we're proposed for geographical spread and would only have been built if we'd been successful, with some (Plymouth, for example) downsized afterwards, but there were other venues on standby to come in if the three most susceptible (Bristol, Plymouth and Milton Keynes) were removed. Even if they'd not been venues they'd have been utilised as training bases. I think if it had been England alone, we'd have been a venue, along with places like Leeds, Derby, Nottingham and maybe Southampton instead of the 4 non English venues put forward.
It's a bit like an ex wife that even though your divorced wants to keep your name and still refers to you as the husband and turns up as "a friend" to family events, but stressed that your not together. They really can't stand on their own two feet without us. A story I was told when I volunteered at London 2012. This comes from one of the blokes training us at the Olympic Stadium. In the early 2000s, with the Irish "Celtic tiger" economy looking fairly strong, the Irish PM wanted to know if Dublin could bid for the Olympics in the future, so he got the Irish sports minister to sent up a working party to look into it. They sent delegations to meet with the bidders for the 2012 games, look at the bids, make friends etc. Later the Irish minister met with his chief representative asking how it had gone and the bloke was enthusiastic, how great the Paris bid was, meeting Seb Coe and London's proposals and vision, how fantastic it all was. The minister then said "so you think it's possible for Dublin to host the Olympics?" He the replied "oh **** no. We don't even have a conference venue as good as the one I've just been in".
And after all that, they sold it to Putin! Mind, there is more than one photo of Infantino, Putin and Bin Salman together looking very pally. My God, what a despicable threesome.
I remember speaking to my mate a few weeks afterwards and he was still stunned. Even though he was only connected to it from up here, he'd followed everything closely and met a few people higher up in the bid (as you do for meetings and visits etc) so did find some stuff out afterwards, though most of it was reported in the media at the same time. The FIFA evaluation report had England coming out as the best bid out of all the bidders for both world cups. Russia was called a medium risk but had just scraped into that. Russia was the second lowest rated bid out of all 9 bids (only Qatar was called lower) and had huge questions on stadiums, training venues, training bases, team hotels and travel. And that was before taking into account hotels for fans, fan visas, security, travelling etc. Even the projected revenue from Russia was dwarfed by the one for England. The England bid had also followed the same process that London 2012 had done, not being seen as arrogant, building relationships, what we can put back to emerging countries, the UK's multiculturalism and being welcoming etc. We'd even agreed to play friendlies with Trinidad and Thailand for less that the usual friendly fees to be seen in a better light. They thought it was going to be between England and the Spanish/Portugese bid, but that we'd got enough support in north America and Asia, especially when 2018 was going to be Europe only and the rest of the world going for 2022. When the results came out and the two worst rated bids, both by a massive margins, won, everyone knew it was fixed. One of the things that really got him was all the money we as a country had wasted on it, something like £13 million during the credit crunch, to be screwed over the way we were. Plus finding out how two faced and untrustworthy some of our supposed "friends" were, pledging support to our faces, right up until the vote knowing all the time they weren't going to vote for us, and how some were happy to knife us in the back but still had the audacity to expect us to support them in their future bids and wants. In the years since I've read/learned a lot about it, and all of it leaves a bad taste. As mate said to me over a beer or three in the Isis five years later as Blatter, Platini, Beckenbaur, Leoz, Blazer, Warner and all were being brought down, you'd rather deal with the mafia and other gangsters as at least you know where they come from. Sadly, we've just swapped one bunch of bastards for another on FIFA. On a side note, a few years ago I was in Glasgow and went to Hampden and had a look round the Scottish National Football Museum. The bloke showing us round took us to a display to David Will, who'd been president of the SFA and a FIFA vice president for 17 years and died in 2009. A genuinely respected and honest figure. I quipped that it was sad and nice, and when the bloke looked at me I said it's nice you've a display to the last honest man to work for FIFA, at which he laughed and said "aye, you're right at that"
