By Andrew Warshaw
November 9 – The English Football Association has written to FIFA demanding answers to “important questions”, following Sepp Blatter’s revelation that a pre-arranged pact was made to hand the 2018 World Cup to Russia before the vote.
Blatter told Russia’s Tass news agency that members of his inner circle had “agreed” before the joint ballot in December, 2010, for Russia to host 2018 and the United States to stage 2022. The second part of the alleged deal was scuppered when a late swing in voting by four European members gave Qatar the 2022 World Cup instead.
Currently suspended by FIFA’s ethics committee, Blatter’s comments have caused global consternation and heaped even more embarrassment on his corruption-tainted organisation.
England gained only two votes when bidding against Russia and an FA spokesman said: “The FA has been reviewing its legal position and, as a result, has written to FIFA asking a series of important questions about the process by which the 2018 World Cup was awarded to Russia. The questions are all based on statements made by Mr Blatter. In the meantime we reserve the FA’s position legally.”
It is understood the questions include when exactly the agreement was made for Russia to host the World Cup, and who the people involved in that agreement were.
The bidding process is already the subject of an ongoing Swiss criminal investigation. Both Blatter and UEFA president Michel Platini, the one-time favourite to replace him at next February’s election, are currently banned pending the outcome of an ethics probe into a SFr2 million payment made to Platini in 2011, which the pair say was for work as Blatter’s adviser nine years earlier.
Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko, who has been on FIFA’s executive committee since 2009, insists his country “didn’t take part in any collusion with anyone” while FIFA’s long-serving Belgian exco member Michel d’Hooghe, whose nation jointly bid with the Netherlands, has denied knowledge of any plot.
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