Sepp Blatter: English 2018 World Cup bid unaffected by press investigations
FIFA president Sepp Blatter has expressed his disapproval of the English media's scrutiny of the body, while adding that the country's press conduct will have no effect on the country's bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
On Thursday 18 November, FIFA's ethics committee banned two members of its executive committee following an investigation by the
Sunday Times that accused two officials, Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii, of selling their votes for the 2022 host country.
In addition to that investigation, a documentary on FIFA produced by BBC Panorama is set for broadcast on 29 November, three days before the executive committee casts its votes on the 2018 and 2022 host countries.
Fearing that the press' conduct would harm the English 2018 bid, David Dein and Geoff Thompson, international president and chairman of the bid team respectively, wrote a letter to FIFA expressing their concern over the investigations and stressing their
inability to interfere with the media's operations.
"Why should this have an influence on the English bid? I don't think [the executive committee] will take into consideration what has been published or not," Blatter told reporters.
The Swiss, who has served as FIFA president since 1998, added that he did not agree with the way in which the two
Sunday Times reporters, who were disguised as American lobbyists when allegedly extracting the promises from Adamu and Temarii, went about the investigation.
"No, I'm not pleased about that because this is not very fair, but now we have a result it gives us an opportunity to clean a little bit whatever has to be cleaned. But I cannot say that it is very fair when you open traps to entrap people. But if the objective
is to have a clean sheet in football then I can understand it."
England are competing with bids from Russia, Spain/Portugal and the Netherlands/Belgium to host the 2018 tournament.
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