By Andrew Warshaw
November 14 – FIFA vice-president Jack Warner (pictured), the man who undermined England’s 2018 World Cup bid, has launched another verbal broadside, this time taking Premier League clubs to task for refusing to release players for international duty and denouncing the Football Association for rejecting a request to play a friendly against his country.
With the latest international weekend imminent, highlighted by the World Cup playoffs, Warner took time out to attack the “outrageous” behaviour of top-flight clubs who, he claimed, deliberately prevent their highly-paid overseas players from representing their countries.
“The English clubs are by far the most guilty and it is all because of money,” Warner charged.
“Have they no shame?
“They say they pay the players and therefore have control.
“Give me a break.
“I understand the difficulties clubs face but it is outrageous in the extreme to contract the best players from international countries, then prevent these same players from carrying out their national duties.
“For the good of football clubs should agree to an unwritten ethic which allows them to free players.
“That’s why we have an international match calendar.”
Warner, from Trinidad and Tobago, cited Fulham as one of the main culprits, claiming the London club had repeatedly prevented his compatriot Bobby Zamora (pictured) from playing for his country.
Without citing specific matches, Warner said: “Every time we pick Zamora and buy him an air ticket, they say he’s coming and then the medical people suddenly say he’s injured.
“It has happened three times so I have instructed them never to pick him again.
“The same thing has happened to African countries.”
Warner, hugely influential in his role as President of CONCAF, is becoming a constant embarrassment to England’s bid campaign.
Not content with berating the 2018 bid team for being too lightweight and needing to buck their ideas up, he recently handed back a £230 designer handbag presented to his wife Maureen at a dinner.
Warner returned the gift - originally earmarked for all 24 FIFA Executive Committee members and a perfectly legal gesture under FIFA guidelines even though it raises questions about the integrity of the bidding process - to FA chairman and bid leader Lord Triesman, along with a scathing letter of complaint about how he and his family had been treated by the media.
But Warner, insideworldfootball can reveal, is not even stopping at this.
In what appears to be a hidden agenda over his derision of England’s World Cup bid, he has now come out in public to take a swipe at the FA for allegedly refusing to play a friendly against his country in the build-up to the recent World Under-20 Championship in Egypt.
“We went to Cyprus to train before the tournament and Australia, the United States and England were there too,” Warner said.
“When we asked for warm-up games, two of them said yes but England didn’t want their players to get injured by these minions from the Caribbean.
“The name of the game is social responsibility.”
Warner’s irritation goes some way to explaining the reasons behind his impromptu attack on England’s 2018 World Cup bid, perceived as a personal vendetta.
His latest comments, however, will be viewed in some quarters as hypocrisy given his own shady background.
He also revealed that he will be pushing for new regulations that would force all clubs buying players from developing countries to hand back 10 per cent of their annual earnings.
Quite how this would be monitored is open to question but Warner intends to raise the issue at the FIFA Executive Committee meeting in South Africa in December.
“It should be obligatory to invest in creating more home-grown players in these countries,” he said.
“If not, the well will dry up.”
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