By Andrew Warshaw in Zurich
May 9 – The English Football Association declined comment today on an explosive report alleging that the country’s 2018 World Cup bid team hired a private security firm to monitor the behaviour of their rivals.
The English officials reportedly asked the investigators to find out what other bidding nations were doing to gain the support of FIFA’s Executive Committee – and also to report back on whether anything was known about England’s own effort to stage the tournament.
The claims, reported by the news agency Bloomberg, were apparently made by two individuals who, the agency said, were unwilling to be identified.
While there is no suggestion – so far at least – that England’s campaign team broke any of the strict bidding rules imposed by FIFA, the hiring of investigators to spy on rivals, if true, would seriously throw into question the morality of such tactics.
FA spokesman Julian Eccles declined to comment, as did FIFA, though President Sepp Blatter was due to appear later in the day at an unconnected news conference here where he was meeting with officials of Interpol to tackle the growing problem of match fixing.
Coincidentally, former English FA and bid chairman David Triesman is due to appear tomorrow before a Parliamentary Committee to discuss the entire 2018 bidding process, specifically why England only ended up receiving two votes when they had spent £15 million ($24 million) on their campaign.
Russia ended up winning by a landslide as England were eliminated in the first round.
Triesman resigned from his 2018 post last May – seven months before the vote – after being secretly taped by an English newspaper having a private conversation during which unsubstantiated bribery claims involving the Spain/Portugal and Russian 2018 bids were allegedly made.
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