FA Responds To Fifa World Cup Bid Criticism

The Football Association has hit back at a FIFA report that criticises England’s bid to host the 2018 World Cup, adding it ‘does not accept any criticism regarding the integrity of England’s bid or any of the individuals involved.’

On Thursday Qatar was cleared of corruption in winning the right to stage the 2022 World Cup by FIFA’s ethics committee.

However, the same report also censures England over its 2018 bid.

The report – by German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert, the chairman of the adjudicatory chamber of FIFA’s independent ethics committee – said England’s conduct ‘damaged the integrity of the ongoing bidding process,’ and that the bid team’s attempts to secure the FIFA executive votes apparently controlled by ex-vice-president Jack Warner included securing a job for a family friend in Britain and violated bidding rules.

The 42-page document also hit out at Lord Triesman, the England bid chairman, saying he did not co-operate with the Garcia investigation but had used his parliamentary privilege to make a number of allegations of corruption in the bidding process.

In a statement from its Wembley headquarters, the FA said: ‘We were not given any prior notice of the report before publication. We do not accept any criticism regarding the integrity of England’s bid or any of the individuals involved.’

‘We conducted a transparent bid and, as the report demonstrates with its reference to the England bid team’s ‘full and valuable cooperation,’ willingly complied with the investigation.’

‘We maintain that transparency and co-operation around this entire process from all involved is crucial to its credibility.’

‘We also note that, after a lengthy investigatory process and assessment, the report has concluded that the ‘potentially problematic facts and circumstances identified by the report regarding the England 2018 bid were, all in all, not suited to compromise the integrity of the FIFA World Cup 2018/22 bidding process as a whole.’