Pressure mounts for new 2022 WCup vote
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PRESSURE mounted yesterday for FIFA to call a new vote on the 2022 World Cup host with Australia declaring that corruption accusations against controversial winner Qatar were a “serious development”.
British government and football officials have also said a new vote should be held if accusations that a top Qatari official made slush fund payments to secure support are proved.
FIFA has not yet commented on reports by the Sunday Times newspaper that Mohamed bin Hammam, a former FIFA vice president from Qatar, paid more than US$5 million to football officials around the world before the 2010 vote that awarded the 2022 contest to the Gulf state.
Qatar has strongly denied the allegations.
Some reports have said Michael Garcia, a top US lawyer heading a FIFA investigation into the vote, was to meet Qatari officials in Oman yesterday. The encounter has not been officially confirmed, however.
Football Federation Australia said yesterday it may re-submit its bid to host the 2022 tournament after the allegations.
Australia was one of the defeated candidates, along with South Korea, Japan and United States at the FIFA vote in December 2010.
“It’s a serious development, they’re serious allegations and we’re looking to see what the response to that will be,” FFA chief executive David Gallop told Australian radio.
Gallop said the FFA had been “heavily involved” in FIFA’s corruption investigation and had provided documents and interviews to Garcia, who is due to hand over a report to a FIFA ethics committee this year.
In the first FIFA executive vote on the 2022 contest, Qatar received 11 votes, South Korea four, the US and Japan three each and Australia one. Qatar went on to beat the US 14 votes to eight in the fourth round.
US officials have not yet commented. South Korea said it would wait for “confirmed facts” before deciding its position.
Asia Football Confederation President Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, however, expressed grave concern over reports calling into question Qatar’s hosting of the 2022 event.
An AFC statement quoted Sheikh Salman as saying that “hosting the FIFA World Cup in Asia, especially in the Middle East, means a lot to the continent and he is looking forward to seeing a successful FIFA World Cup in Qatar”.
FIFA vice president Jim Boyce, from Northern Ireland, said that if “concrete evidence” of corruption is shown then he would back a new vote on 2022.
English Football Association chief Greg Dyke also said there should be a new vote if there was a “corrupt system” in the 2010 vote.
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