By Andrew Warshaw in London
August 23 – Arsenal’s international Russian striker Andrei Arshavin has hit back at claims by Sports Minister Hugh Robertson that the Eastern European country is lagging behind England for the right to stage the 2018 World Cup.
Robertson said earlier today that if Russia wins the vote on December 2, they would have to start virtually from scratch and hinted that FIFA’s ultimate decision may be wrongly based politics rather than sporting criteria.
Bidding World Cup nations are not supposed to discuss rival contenders in public and Robertson’s comments are understood to have gone down badly in Moscow and, perhaps more damagingly, also with senior FIFA executives in Zurich, who are furious with the remarks.
They even considered reporting England to the FIFA Ethics Commission over the remarks and only decided not to because Robertson is not an official member of the bid.
Robertson’s claims, coupled with the opening remarks to the FIFA delegation, led by Harold Mayne-Nicholls, by British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg as they arrived in London that England’s bid is “unbeatable”, led one senior official at the world governing body to claim that such “arrogance” had the potential to wreck the chances of the World Cup coming back to this country for the first time since 1966.
Arshavin believes his country would benefit more than England from hosting the tournament and that the fact England already has the infrastructure in place is in fact a minus point with little legacy strength, a viewpoint shared by several impartial observers.
”You [England] should not have it,” Arshavin told talkSPORT.
”You have everything.
“If you say, ‘Let’s start the World Cup tomorrow’, you have everything already.
“For us it’s going to be much more.
“In general, in worldwide football it would be better.
”It will let us get infrastructure because at the moment it is not good enough for football.
“Our people love football and it will probably be the biggest event this century for our people.”
Privately Russian officials are delighted that the remarks of Clegg and Robertson have overshadowed the opening day of the FIFA inspection visit to England which had started on such a positive note when President Sepp Blatter had told insideworldfootball that organsing the tournament here would be “easy”.
But Moscow is carefully avoding getting sucked into a potentially damaging war of words with their main rivals.
A spokesman told insideworldfootball: ”We do not comment any statement made by other bidders or by their country’s Governmental representatives, in line with FIFA regulations in this respect.
“We have made our case last week and the official statements are there.”
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