FA Chairman Greg Dyke has revealed England will not bid for a future World Cup under the current FIFA leadership.
The FA chairman appeared before the Culture Media and Sportselect committee on Tuesday to answer questions over the bidding process for the 2022 tournament, which has been plagued by allegations of corruption and bribery.
Dyke said the FA would focus on bidding for Uefa rather than FiFA tournaments in the future but said that withdrawing England’s membership of the world governing body was not an option.
“We’ve already taken the decision that we will not bid for FiFA tournaments – our decision is we will concentrate in the years ahead on bidding for Uefa tournaments. We wouldn’t win,” Dyke said. England are competing with Germany to host the 2020 European Championship final and semi-finals.
But Dyke stopped short of suggesting a walk out by the FA.
“I don’t think we should walk out of FIFA because within a week everyone has forgotten you. I don’t think that sort of gesture-politics would help. I think trying to reform through Uefa and from the inside is the better way forward.”
Last month the 78-year-old president Sepp Blatter announced he would run for a fifth term as FiFA decided not to impose an age limit nor maximum terms for officials.
Dyke called for widespread reform of FIFA but admitted it was unlikely to occur under Blatter.
“We think there’s a limited amount of time people should sit on the Fifa executive,” Dyke said. “We voted in favour of that but most voted against it. It’s that sort of reform that is needed to make sure we get proper turnover.
“Hopefully a new president coming in would take a look at the whole structure. A lot of the European FAs made it clear they didn’t support Blatter but I’m afraid from the rest of the world he has overwhelming support.
“If he runs again he will win, but I think it’s unlikely we at the FA would vote for him.”
FIFA Delay Corruption Findings Report
FIFA are in the midst of an investigation into allegations into corruption but the report, which was expected to come out in late July, has been delayed several weeks.
FIFA investigator Michael Garcia’s report is looking into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.
Former US attorney Garcia set an original timeframe of late July for delivery of his confidential report to Joachim Eckert - the judge for the adjudicatory chamber of the Ethics Committee - but is now expected to do so in September. No explanation for the delay has been provided.
It is also not clear whether Garcia has taken into account the findings of the Sunday Times newspaper, which printed a detailed report that alleged Qatar’s bid to host the tournament was corrupt, with large bribes allegedly made to FIFA officials in exchange for their votes.
Qatar bid officials have denied any wrongdoing and say Qatari Mohammed Bin Hammam, the disgraced former FIFA committee member at the heart of the claims, played no official or unofficial role in their bid.
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