By Andrew Warshaw
May 8 – A voting member of FIFA’s Executive Committee asked for a knighthood in exchange for backing England’s bid to stage the 2018 World Cup, The Sunday Times newspaper reported today.
Paraguay’s Nicolas Leoz (pictured with Prince Harry), President of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL) and one of the most powerful men in the game, is alleged to have raised the question of being knighted at a meeting with England officials in November, 2009.
The 82-year-old is said to have claimed the special honour was the only thing he wanted as a quid-pro-quo.
Far from being a flippant comment, sources close to the bid revealed the request was pretty direct.
“He went through it at some length and made clear what he expected from us,” one source told the paper.
Simon Greenberg, who was chief of staff during England’s World Cup bid, is now director of corporate affairs at News International, the publishers of The Sunday Times.
The revelations come less than a week after Leoz was again the centre of attention following reports he had been invited to Prince William’s wedding as an enticement to vote for England.
Leoz astonishingly claimed he received an invite to the marriage of the Prince William and Kate Middleton just a day before FIFA awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia rather than England.
A spokesman for the Royal Family categorically denied the claims and there was no immediate comment on the latest remarkable allegations from the Football Association.
If true, The Sunday Times’ report will heap unwanted embarrassment on FIFA President Sepp Blatter with an election challenge to his job just three weeks away.
Blatter’s next scheduled appearance in front of the media will be following tomorrow’s unconnected illegal betting summit with officials of Interpol.
Ironically, Blatter has vowed in his manifesto to weed out corruption after the organisation suffered a serious blow to its credibility, again engineered by the The Sunday Times whose expose into two other Executive Committee members, Amos Adamu of Nigeria and Tahiti’s Reynald Temarii, led to them both being suspended following an investigation.
It seems almost certain that members of Parliament will raise the new claims about Leoz when they examine the failure of England’s bid at a public hearing on Tuesday (May 10).
The inquiry into football governance will be quizzing former England 2018 chairman Lord Triesman over why England managed to secure only two votes.
Triesman, forced to resign during the bid process after being caught up in a newspaper sting, is the key witness on Tuesday and is expected to be grilled over any shady deals that were discussed.
He is understood to have attended the meeting in question with Leoz but declined to comment today.
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