“We do not accept any criticism regarding the integrity of England’s bid” said the Football Association, responding to the statement by Hans-Jochim Eckert, the chairman of the Adjudicatory Chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee on the report of the inquiry into the 2018/2022 FIFA World Cup bidding process. The FA was accused of damaging the image of FIFA when bidding for the 2018 World Cup, with the FIFA report stating the FA behaved improperly when trying to “curry favour” with former FIFA Vice President Jack Warner from Trinidad & Tobago, who resigned in 2011 amid of bribery allegations.
The report says England’s bid team tried to win the support of Warner by trying to help “a person of interest to him” find a part time job in the United Kingdom. letting the Trinidad and Tobago Under-20 squad hold a training camp in the UK in the summer of 2009 and sponsoring a gala dinner for the Caribbean Football Union, at a cost of 55,000 US$. By doing so, the FA damaged “the image of FIFA and the bidding process”.
“We note the FIFA Ethics Committee has today published a 42-page report in relation to the bidding processes for the FIFA World Cups in 2018 and 2022,” said a FA spokesman. “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 cooperation 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’.”
This article was republished with permission from the editor and publisher of the Sport Intern, Karl Heinz-Huba.