By Andrew Warshaw
January 10 – England’s 2018 bid team had prepared a fresh presentation to be delivered to the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in Angola later this month but were denied the opportunity after Qatar signed an exclusive sponsorship deal, insideworldfootball has learned.
But the fact that Qatar are only bidding for 2022 and none of England’s 2018 rivals will be allowed to present either considerably lessened the blow.
High-ranking England bid sources deny claims that the bid team had been working for several weeks on a new initiative to be announced at the CAF Congress.
But they admit they would have welcomed the chance to give delegates an update on long-established development programmes on the African Continent.
“We had been planning a presentation, it’s true,” one leading source told insideworldfootball.
“It was the same core material as before but personalised to make our message more relevant to the African continent.”
Following the terrorist atrocity on the Togolese team, England 2018 officials are now taking a cautious approach in terms of where and when to lobby their case.
Members of England’s bid team will be at the CAF Congress anyway in a monitoring capacity having already lobbied extensively in meetings with each of Africa’s Fifa executive committee members.
Most recently, David Beckham and bid chairman Lord Triesman had meetings with Cameroon’s Issa Hayatou, the President of CAF, Ivory Coast’s Jacques Anouma and Nigeria’s Dr Amos Adamu.
Also, in December, former Manchester United and England striker Andrew Cole, another 2018 Ambassador, travelled out to Nigeria with Lord Triesman to meet with Adamu.
“Any presentation in Angola doesn’t only have to be done at the Congress so we are pretty relaxed about it all,” said the afore-mentioned source.
“It’s certainly not an opportunity lost because bidders can choose other days and we looking at this as option though at present everything is on hold for obvious reasons.
“Obviously we can’t now get the captive audience we might have had and in an ideal world that would have been helpful. But the bottom line is that it’s one-on-one meetings with the four African Fifa exco members that count most.”
Australia are the nation most likely to suffer most from Qatar’s sponsorship deal since they are being denied the chance to officially go up against a rival Asian candidate.
The Australians are understood to be furious at Qatar’s unique arrangement which has denied them a vital lobbying platform.
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