England’s 2018 Bid ‘harmed’ By UK Media

Media reports are quoting a senior source within England’s 2018 World Cup bid team as admitting that the UK newspaper investigation into the bidding process has ‘significantly harmed’ England’s campaign.

Although a member of the FIFA executive committee previously claimed there would be no backlash against England the admission would appear to indicate that The Sunday Times probe into two members of the committee has hindered England’s challenge ahead of the vote on 2nd December.

With four weeks to go to the decision, England’s bid team has not given up all hope of turning the situation around but the source quoted stated that the prospect of any future media investigations into the conduct of FIFA officials – including a potential Panorama programme on the BBC – could be fatal for their chances.

The bid team source is quoted as saying: ‘The question is: can we recover from this? FIFA members feel they are being persecuted by the British media.

‘It isn’t dead and the next two or three weeks will be delicate but England’s bid has been damaged and it’s going to take a lot of hard work to repair that damage.’

One move being considered by England’s bid is to ask all the editors of the national newspapers and broadcasters to write to FIFA declaring their support for the 2018 bid.

Whether that would address the damage done in recent weeks is unlikely but it was a tactic used by the team leading London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics when organisers feared that a Panorama investigation could derail the campaign.

FIFA’s ethics committee is due to meet from 15th-17th November to discuss whether to take further action against the two executive committee members – Amos Adamu from Nigeria and Reynald Temarii from Tahiti – who were accused in The Sunday Times expose.

Reporters from the newspaper posed as lobbyists for a consortium of private American companies who wanted to secure the World Cup for the United States.

Adamu has been accused of asking to be paid £500,000 – half of that up front – to build four artificial football pitches in his home country.

Temarii, a FIFA vice-president who represents the Oceania confederation, was alleged to have requested £1.5m for a sports academy to be built in the region.

Both deny any wrongdoing and will fight the allegations when they appear before FIFA’s ethics committee later this month.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter signalled the start of a backlash against the British media last week when he said: ‘One can ask whether such an action is appropriate, trying to set traps for people. It is a deeply rooted problem (with the English media).

‘Who is benefitting from this situation and who is being harmed, we are asking ourselves why did it happen and why did it happen specifically by English journalists? We are looking at that.’