FIFA World Cup 2010 and Public Diplomacy: Winners and Losers

By Jean Lukaz MIH

Too soon, the football fever is down and many nations that participated in the recent World Cup 2010 shall be evaluating the impact of their participation in cash and in kind.

To the winners, there is nothing like football in public diplomacy, to the losers it is the most uncontrollable and unpredictable channel of public diplomacy to one massive global audience. If public diplomacy is about government communication aimed at foreign audiences with goal of winning hearts and minds, then the role of national teams that are government-sponsored and -branded to feature before the foreign audiences watching the World Cup is a latent promotion of these nations that has the effect of infecting foreign fans.

Countries sought to promote their nation brands in a sublime exchange that followed their victories and individual players boosted their market value through their extraordinary performances.

Regrettably, however, those countries among the best brands could not leverage their forlorn image in the face of defeat and the mockery that followed their exit. The memories shall be cast in mockumentaries for generations to watch.

In the aftermath of the Gerard goal and Hands of Suarez, the influence of public opinion is beginning to shape both FIFA and its member nations.

Governments increasingly have had to learn the hard way to passively communicate to mass audiences such as the football public through an impressive national team and leverage their national reputation amidst the clutter of global schisms but beyond international coalitions on political or military issues, or beyond competition for a share of global trade, tourism or investment.

Recovering from a fallen image has a way of strategically ridiculing a nation as has happened to Nigeria’s ban on the national team: ‘lets teach them a lesson,’ forgetting that the ‘them’ in this case is the nation as a whole and not some greenly-clad undisciplined footballers. The French are still playing musical chairs in a blame game; the Americans have seen the limitations of world dominance and Obama’s soft power public diplomacy has paid off with their peaceful early exit; the British are mocking their coach for making an appalling fashion statement in front of the world as a diversion as they return to their bad food in Cool Britannia and the Italians may not need to dissolve parliament over their past glory. Football, after all, was not made for Brazil.

Africa’s public diplomacy shall be canonized for a wonderful organization by South Africa and dynamic nature of the game of football as championed by Uruguay’s Suarez.

Dark tourism in Ghana shall be promoted with a new monument in honour of Suarez for literally keeping Ghana out of the semi-finals of the World Cup 2010 and ‘the Gods are not to blame.’ Viva Espana!