In a development that reveals just how low they now deem themselves to have sunk in FIFA’s estimations (and how far back they have fallen back in terms of the impending vote), England 2018 have written to every voting member on the organisation’s executive committee (EC), pleading with them to not to punish the bid team for the actions of the nation’s independent media and press.
Being the self-serving preservationists as they are, FIFA have been understandably irked by the ongoing investigations being made into the corruption embedded within their corridors of power, carried out chiefly by covert staff of the Sunday Times newspaper (which resulted in the high-profile provisional suspension of EC members Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii last month).
According to reports in today’s broadsheets, the simpering letter declares England 2018‘s ‘solidarity and support’ for the way in which FIFA responded to the allegations levied at them by the Sunday Times, distances them from a forthcoming BBC Panorama exposé (that has tentatively been scheduled to air just three days before the vote in Zurich on December 2nd) and also refers to suspended duo Adamu and Temarii as ‘our (England’s) friends’.
The Guardian are also suggesting that bid insiders have informed them that the letter ‘represents a calculated risk’ by attempting to closely align England 2018 with a both a process and an organisation that are now teetering so precariously thanks to their recently highlighted vulnerabilities to exploitation.
Whilst the England 2018 bid team have openly acknowledged that the myriad of recent corruption allegations should be fully investigated by FIFA’s in-house ethics committee, the campaign hierarchy are now wholly more concerned about the potentially devastating effect that the Panorama programme could have on their chances of success – with worries that the BBC could cost them huge swathes of votes in their race to pip Russia, Spain/Portugal and Holland/Belgium to the prize.
However, England 2018 are thought to believe that Panorama will largely be retreading the existing allegations, rather than indulging in any of their own sh*t-flicking.
As such, should there be no new scandal then it would seem that the BBC are merely chasing publicity (and, by-proxy, those ever-precious ratings) by choosing to broadcast the programme in such close proximity to the FIFA vote.
This from the Daily Telegraph:
“It is thought Panorama has been seeking comment on familiar allegations arising from the collapse in 2001 of marketing company (and sports agency) ISL.
The BBC has sent 16 questions largely relating to ISL to FIFA president Sepp Blatter ‘as well as a request for an interview’.
England 2018 also expect Fifa vice-president Jack Warner’s well-documented involvement in black-market ticket sales to be revisited, which could antagonise one of their most influential potential supporters.”
England 2018 chairman Geoff Thompson and international chairman David Dein have already failed in their joint attempts to rally BBC director-general Mark Thompson into rescheduling, postponing and/or cancelling the broadcast date of the Panorama ‘investigation’, and it now looks at though they have taken the logical progression and begun to harass the electorate.
After all this snivelling, pandering and the attrocious fallacy that they are simply ‘acting in the public’s interest’, England 2018 barely deserve to host the World Cup any more than FIFA deserve their honour of bestowing it upon anybody.
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