When Simon Cowell is wheeled out to back England's 2018 World Cup bid to ignite one final PR push it must signal the final stages of an exhausting campaign that has been the equal of one of his reality shows for rollercoaster emotion and behind the scenes intrigue. It was Beatles week on the X-Factor and, for the England 2018 chief executive, Andy Anson, next Thursday's vote in Zurich will represent the end of a long and winding road.
Hence, too, the continued nervousness about next Monday's Panorama. England's bid team feel they have done all they can to distance themselves, including writing to all 22 executive committee members, but are acutely aware it could undermine their final push. Warner yesterday spoke out on the topic for the first time, claiming he was "sure it's a personal vendetta". "But it is sooooooooooo stupid … for it can have no effect on me personally or on anyone else in Fifa for that matter and, in my personal opinion, it is deliberately designed to negatively impact on England's chances," he wrote in an email. "It is just a rehash of the same old bullshit so I continue to sleep very soundly at nights."
Deconstructing the problems with the process – the parallel races for 2018 and 2022 that virtually guarantee collusion, the small electorate with power but little accountablity, the secret nature of the ballot, the way in which bidders are encouraged to criss-cross the globe making promises – is a debate for another day. The bidders have to deal with the world as it is, and that means a frantic last bout of lobbying if they are to come from behind and triumph. They remain convinced there are still votes up for grabs.
Through all the internal ructions that dogged the first 18 months of the campaign, England's team have always known that it would come down to this. The outcome remains impossible to call between their bid and those of Spain/Portgual and Russia because the margins are so fine. There also remains the possibility that one of the three could crash out in the first round at the expense of Holland/Belgium. For England to remain in contention, they need to carry the three Concacaf votes to reach their target of the seven required to definitely progress. Danny Jordaan, the man who worked for 16 years to bring the World Cup to South Africa, warned last year that the three votes (four before Amos Adamu's suspension) from Africa would also be crucial.
England have lobbied hard to secure them, but Russia appears in pole position. Likewise Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam. While the Premier League has forged close links with Bin Hammam and the AFC in recent years, Bin Hammam appears to have hitched his wagons to Spain/Portugal's bid because it offers the best chance of getting Qatar over the line in 2022. But Asia will not vote as a bloc. Japan's Junji Ogura is expected to back England, while the Thai Worawi Makudi is thought to be in the Spain/Portugal camp and the intentions of South Korea's Chung Mong-joon remain unclear.
England's bid team believe they retain a good chance of securing the majority they require. Russia's support base may have been weakened by Spanish alliance with Qatar and Sepp Blatter's rearguard action against Spain and Qatar could lead to a reluctance from those outside the bloc of seven to join them in later rounds. Speculation of this sortabout the voting will intensify as the bidders read the runes and construct their lobbying strategies for the final week, when some of the biggest names in politics and football will take up residence in the lakeside hotel favoured by executive committee members for one final frantic push.
The twists and turns of the past few weeks have been enough to destablise all involved. Two Fifa executive committee members have been suspended, provoking a state of near revolt among some of their colleagues and leaving all the bidders hurriedly recalibrating their strategies. And while Fifa's ethics committee ruled that there were not "sufficient grounds" to prove vote trading between Spain/Portugal's 2018 bid and Qatar's pitch for 2022 it is widely assumed that their interests are aligned to the extent that they can each rely on the support of seven executive committtee members.
Turbulence has been the default setting for the England bid for most of the 22 months since a delegation landed in Zurich in January 2009 to submit the bid. The week before, the Guardian published an analysis headlined "tensions threaten united front as England launches push for 2018" and things continued in much the same vein for the next 18 months. Initially, there was disquiet at the lack of Premier League representation on the board, against the backdrop of an ongoing power struggle between the FA and the Premier League, and concern that it was stuffed full of political appointees. That eventually led to a wholesale reorganisation in an attempt to get the campaign back on track.
Each new eruption chipped away at morale and diverted attention and resources, preventing the campaign message from evolving much beyond "back the bid". The Premier League chairman, Sir Dave Richards, flounced out over a perceived slight while Lord Triesman, with whom he never saw eye to eye, resigned as bid chairman after a newspaper sting in May that still provokes debate over its morality.
Each internal crisis was viewed with an air of amused inevitablity by England's rivals, who looked on as the bid threatened to self destruct, and credit is due for getting it back on track. There are those, including some on the bid board, who argue that Triesman's departure in May was no bad thing in removing a divisive influence who was unpopular with many at Fifa. There are others who argue with equal force he was forced to leave for no good reason, that he had built good relations with the Uefa president Platini and was beginning to win over other members of the global football family.
Up until a month ago, England had been enjoying a good run on the back of a positive inspection visit in the summer and a successful visit to Downing Street by Blatter. But then came the Sunday Times investigation and the spectre of Panorama. Both played into long-held Fifa fears about the British media and the bid team went into damage limitation mode. In Fifa's alternate reality, Russia's crackdown on free speech is seen as preferable to the prospect of facing the British media for eight years.
Anson and co have been buoyed by what they say has been positive feedback from an attempt to nullify the effects and are convinced they have a good chance of pulling off a comeback. Almost all of those close to the process insist it remains too close to call. With such a small electorate, and such fine margins at play, persuading a single voter to switch his second preference to England could prove crucial in the latter rounds of voting.
Anson, sounding more upbeat of late, yesterday headed east to the Asian Footballer of the Year awards in Kuala Lumpur with board member Paul Elliott, his chairman, Geoff Thompson, and the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt. Meanwhile, the globetrotting international president, David Dein, was in Brazil at Soccerex in a final attempt to swing the votes of Fifa executive committee members. "We are in it to win it," he said, before leaving for Paraguay.
Through all its ups and downs the English bid has been played out in public. Spain and Portugal, in contrast, have barely had a public profile. Instead, they have largely relied on the prodigous networking skills of their executive committee member Angel Maria Villar Llona and go into the final week with a strong chance of victory.
The fundamentals of England'sthe bid remain strong, as emphasised by the technical reports published last week by Fifa. Passionate fans, impressive and already built stadiums, a promised record commercial return, a "home from home" for competing teams and the promise of a legacy for world football. The drive to ensure that the bid was not hobbled by the sense of arrogance and entitlement that tripped up the last attempt to secure the World Cup has been largely successful, even if it has sometimes led to a curious timidity.
Paradoxically, England's strength is also its weakness. The Fifa president, and others on the executive committee are in thrall to the idea of making history and taking their biggest cash cow into new territories. For all England's hopes that the global recession would promote caution, Russia remains a beguiling option – particularly if the multi-billion pound investment is underwritten by the government and personally guaranteed by Vladimir Putin.
The Spain/Portugal bid highlights another perceived blind spot for England. Not only does English football not have a Platini or a Franz Beckenbauer, it does not have a Villar Llona. The first chairman, Triesman, built good relations with Platini but others were scathing. And the second, England's representative on the Fifa executive committee, Geoff Thompson, has kept a characteristically low profile that his supporters say is quietly effective and his detractors say may as well be non-existent.
If England fail to prevail, much soul searching will follow. The bid itself will come under scrunity, but so too will the Football Association and Fifa itself. Others will ask whether we should have been bidding in the first place. The core bid team is seen to have generally done a good job in the last six months, for all the problems of the previous eighteen.
To win, they will have to replicate the late burst of momentum that saw London 2012 over the line in Singapore in 2005 and hope that the stardust of their delegation combined with a glitzy presentation expected to major heavily on Premier League stars will be enough to beat Russia's compelling legacy driven pitch and Spain/Portugal's superior political clout. The recurring questions that have repeatedly bubbled to the surface will return a thousandfold if the best efforts of Cameron, Prince William, David Beckham and co do not prove enough on 2 December.