By Andrew Warshaw in Zurich
December 1 – The nine bidders involved in tomorrow’s 2018 and 2022 World Cup ballots may never know how many votes they won and lost during the entire process.
In the past, members of FIFA’s Executive Committee have always been given the vote count at the end of each elimination round before recasting their votes among those still left in the race.
The information has then invariably been passed on to the bidding candidates themselves to ascertain where they went right and wrong and try to identify which Executive Committee members carried out their pledges of support and who let them down.
But not this time.
Insideworldfootball has learned that neither the nine bidding nations nor the 22 voting members will be told the round-by-round voting numbers tomorrow.
The only information they will receive is which country has been knocked out on a round-by-round basis.
The only two people officially aware of the counts in each individual round will be FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke and the Swiss notary appointed for the bidding process.
Not even FIFA President Sepp Blatter will be informed, merely being given the two envelopes at the end of the balloting, containing the names of each winning candidate.
To make matters even more intriguing, it is understood that whoever emerges victorious will not even know whether they have won via a casting vote by Blatter in the event of an 11-11 tie, or with a straight majority.
The changes have been made in order to make the secret ballot even more watertight in what is the first ever simultaneous double World Cup decision.
“The members were given the update at the last ExCo meeting,” said one high-ranking FIFA insider.
“They were also advised not to cast too many sympathy votes early on for fear of the best bid not actually winning.”
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