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The Sunday Times exposé has exploded like a cannonball off the port bow of the good ship FIFA.
The allegations already spread across three broadsheet pages are damaging enough - although not everyone will have been surprised that the headline “World Cup votes for sale” should have appeared at some point in the campaign.
But there was the suggestion in yesterday evening’s FIFA statement that more unwelcome disclosures might be in store.
The statement refers to “the alleged agreements between member associations” and says that an investigation into the bodies in question and their Bid Committees has been opened.
Try as I might, I can find no allegation in my copy of the newspaper that could feasibly be characterised in this way.
So are we to conclude that some of FIFA’s probings involve allegations which the world at large does not yet know about?
It is easy to get carried away at such moments; so it is worth reminding ourselves that so far no-one has been found to have done anything wrong. Indeed they may never be.
But the question it has left hanging in my mind is, What would it take for the credibility of FIFA’s 24-member Executive Committee to become so compromised it is no longer deemed capable of taking the momentous decisions on where to play the 2018 and 2022 World Cups?
One or two suspensions? I think it could probably shrug off - although it would no doubt send bidding teams into a frenzy of recalibration of the various possible voting permutations.
Any more than that? You have to wonder.
And what alternative mechanism, if any, could FIFA turn to?
Partly because of this, I think it is too early to judge which, if any, bidders might benefit from this turn of events.
One thing that would leave me very surprised is if the present allegations precipitate a significant delay in the hosting decision, scheduled for December 2.
I simply don’t see what would be gained by such a step, unless FIFA bosses were convinced it was the key to preventing similar allegations from surfacing in future.
One conclusion which it seems to me that many may be drawing in a few weeks’ time is that it was perhaps not such a good idea for FIFA to award two World Cups simultaneously.
Assuming the present timetable sticks, the 2022 World Cup host is going to be chosen nearly 12 years before the tournament actually takes place.
This compares with seven years for an Olympic Games host.
Yes, the commercial incentive to award two World Cups in one go is plain: prospective top-tier sponsors for the 2015-22 period can be told exactly where “their” World Cups will be taking place and will thus know exactly what they are buying, which may in turn enable FIFA to secure a higher price for the rights at its disposal.
But by bracketing two bidding contests together FIFA also opened the door to a temptation for bidders for different World Cups to trade votes in a way that would simply not be possible if it had stuck to the traditional method of awarding one World Cup at a time.
At least, FIFA now has a chance to strike a blow against big football’s enduring reputation for sleaze of one kind or another by investigating the allegations thoroughly and transparently.
Three years ago, when interviewing Jérôme Valcke, FIFA’s secretary general, I asked him whether, with money still gushing into the game, this reputation really mattered.
He replied: “Who is happy to be on the front line - to have the press saying, ‘You are corrupt people’ or ‘You are a corrupt organisation’ or ‘Your sport is corrupt’?
“No one can be happy about that.”
Starting tomorrow, FIFA’s Ethics Committee has an opportunity to show it.
David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 World Cup. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938