In the more than seven years since the decision to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments, many fine legal minds, investigators, journalists and others have attempted to find out just how Russia, and especially Qatar, managed to pull it off.

As with almost everything to do with the entire World Cup bidding process conducted by FIFA, there is more to the story than merely about how two nations won. Much more.

This book lifts the lid on how a bid for the greatest show on earth, the FIFA World Cup, works from the inside – an inside that involves what is now known as the murky, corrupt goings-on of world football administration. As US Senator Richard Blumenthal said, comparing FIFA to the mafia “is almost insulting to the mafia”.

It’s also the inside story of a losing bid team and the characters around it. It’s the inside story of how the ‘FIFA Way – as former US Attorney-General Loretta Lynch referred to it – works, and the impact it has on individual lives. 

And it shows that when it comes to the greatest prize in world football some people will do whatever it takes.