SIR BOBBY AND ISMAIL

The FIFA Club World Cup is one of FIFA’s strangest creations. And if you know FIFA even slightly, that's saying something.

In essence, it makes sense - to find the best club side in the world each year. But the practicalities of it mean it is a bizarre curiosity to both onlookers and those involved. Publicly, it has to be supported and talked up, but in actuality it is a great big pain in the arse.

The problem is an administrative one. Clubs play so much football these days that finding a decent chunk of free time to pursue yet another trophy, is asking too much. For the big clubs, of which at least one will be involved in the Club World Cup, it’s a PR disaster waiting to happen. If they play in the CWC and lose, they are hammered. If they play in the CWC and win, it was a waste of everyone else's time. If they don't go at all, they are insulting the smaller sides. If they go but rest some key players, they are insulting the smaller sides. If they go and don't rest key players but key players get injured, they are lambasted as careless. And most of all, if they go and win as expected, no one really takes their new “world champions” status seriously.

In its current incarnation, the FIFA Club World Cup pits every continental champion against each other. And with the balance of world football weighted towards Europe, it's the reigning UEFA Champions League winners that are the stars of the show. The host nation tends to be an emerging market that doesn't often get to see big club sides on their doorstep. In 2009, that emerging football market was the UAE.

And of course, the build up was to prove as over-blown as the event itself. The Emirates Palace served as the venue for the official draw, where the clubs found out who they would need to face to progress. Al Wahda FC from Abu Dhabi were playing as the league champions of the host nation and they would play in an opening round against one of the least well-known continental champions. To say the event was divided into clear rounds would be a massive simplification. As the qualified teams get bigger in stature, their involvement is smaller. The UEFA Champions League winners need only turn up in the last few days as they enter the competition at the semi final stage. This means that they could go on and claim world champion status, having played only twice in the event, Al Wahda on the other hand, would need to win four in a row just to reach the final. It's these details which force you to start to think of the event as an exhibition tournament, rather than a prestigious competition.

With the draw taking place a good four months before the event itself, it also meant that most of the clubs involved had not yet been finalised. So in place of most of the names on the huge tournament draw display, it read “Qualifier 2” or “Qualifier 4” - which is not exactly thrilling to report on. But, despite the draw not actually being able to feature many teams, it was still treated with the usual UAE bluster. One of Al Wahda’s star players Ismail Mattar was part of the ceremony as were some FIFA bigwigs but the main draw of the draw was Sir Bobby Charlton.

England and Manchester United legend and 1966 World Cup winner Charlton looked more bemused than anyone. Considering he had been in the inner circle of the game for more than half a century, you'd think he would be able to make some sense of it. But if Sir Bobby was finding it tough to drum up enthusiasm for a draw that didn't have any names to draw, you can understand why the rest of us struggled too. But he’s a professional and with Mattar the pair gamely picked out bits of paper from brightly colored balls and proudly declared “qualifier 2 will play qualifier 5 in match 3.”

With the draw that wasn't a draw duly complete, it was journalist feeding frenzy time. Mattar, Charlton and the FIFA suits were now free from their ceremonial duties and, as normal, the local organising committee had failed to truly plan what happens next. I asked the 'liaison' if I can get a quick interview with Sir Bobby and they genuinely looked surprised. With a short follow up sentence, I managed to convince them that flying Sir Bobby to Abu Dhabi and not having him talk about the event was a mildly dumb thing to do. I was asked where I would like to interview him and I gestured to anywhere. The liaison went off to find someone who could tell them what to think. I decided not to wait and grabbed my waiting camera crew and headed for the great man who was in the corner of the hall having a polite, non-speaking conversation with Ismail Mattar.

“Excuse me Sir Bobby, could we do a quick interview for Dubai TV?”

Mr Charlton seemed more than a little relieved to not only discover an english accent but to also be given something to actually do. Aged 71, he seemed a little bit more frail than I hoped for but he was still Sir Bobby bloody Charlton.

Now as soon as he said yes to the chat, I encouraged my cameraman to just start filming before someone told us to stop. I think I was asking the first question before he’d even pointed the camera at the legendary face itself. As Sir Bobby started his answer though, I felt I suddenly had extra company. An arm suddenly appeared around my waist with a microphone in it, pointed at the Charlton mouth. Another appeared soon after, this one snaked under my armpit. Three or four more soon joined in and I felt flesh being pressed against me and the unmistakable smell of more cameramen in close proximity. What can often happen at these things is that camera crews and reporters get assigned events like this with absolutely no knowledge or understanding of what it is. Furthermore, no research will be done prior to their arrival and they can often still look uneducated about the event as they are leaving. My new close friends had no idea who Sir Bobby was but the mere fact that I had gone to interview him was all they needed to know that he might be significant. And since they hadn't bothered to research or find out even the most basic of facts they couldn't conduct their own interview so they had to piggy back onto mine.

Now I actually felt a bit bad for Sir Bobby. As an elder gentleman, in a very different culture than he is used to, he looked a little bit overwhelmed by the sudden influx of added microphones and sweaty people into our one on one chat. What is also evident with stars who are suddenly out of their comfort zone is they are visually terrified of saying something inappropriate and offensive by accident. The lack of consideration by my fellow reporters left me a tad shaken myself. They were clearly desperate for content to take back to their paymaster despite the fact they weren’t prepared to do any homework about the event. I thanked Sir Bobby and then I managed to subtly guide him over to an organisor before he could be accosted by another pack of unruly, uninformed hounds.

I did the same thing with Ismail Mattar shortly after and the same thing happened again. With his limited english at the time and the fact we didn't have any significant club names to speak about by then, it went surprisingly well.

I assume the other 8 microphones enjoyed it too.