Pressure grows on Fifa as secret FA documents made available to MPs• MPs given access to confidential dossier on Fifa members
• Gerry Sutcliffe says intelligence services contributed to file
• Brussels summit demands overhaul of scandal-hit body
• Marina Hyde: Blatter revealed as world’s best dictator
Lord Triesman, left, and the Fifa presidential candidate Jérôme Champagne at the New Fifa Now summit in Brussels.
A pressure group has called for a new Fifa reform commission to lead a fundamental overhaul of football’s scandal-hit world governing body. Speaking at the New Fifa Now summit in Brussels, the MP Damian Collins said the new commission should be overseen by a body such as Unesco and given the power to publish all outstanding corruption inquiries.
Meanwhile, an influential House of Commons select committee will be granted access to the Football Association’s confidential files on the contentious 2018 World Cup bidding race, according to the former sports minister Gerry Sutcliffe.
The culture, media and sport select committee has conducted a series of investigations into the controversial 2018 and 2022 bidding processes.
Sutcliffe said: “I think part of this file was compiled using the intelligence services. The FA have been very cagey about it all. They were reluctant at first and said we could not see it, that it was restricted – clearly it’s not.
“Public money was used on the bid from the bidding cities and the government was asked to give guarantees, so we need to know about this. When I was sports minister I didn’t know anything about this cloak and dagger stuff, so we need to know why it happened, who raised it and what it was all about.” He said the FA had agreed to allow access to the files compiled by the 2018 bid, which cost £21m and garnered only two votes, but would not hand them over in full.
At the summit at the European parliament, a series of speakers called for fundamental change in the wake of the corruption-plagued 2018 and 2022 World Cup race and the subsequent row over attempts to investigate it.
An investigation by the US attorney Michael Garcia descended into farce when he resigned his position after his adjudicatory counterpart on the ethics committee, Hans-Joachim Eckert, refused to publish his findings in full. Fifa has now promised to publish his report in an “appropriate” form.
Collins said the new group would call for term limits and an independent and separate reform commission with proper protection for whistleblowers. He said there should be full transparency, with minutes of all meetings published, live streaming of executive committee meetings and full declarations of interest.
The Belgian MEP Ivo Belet said: “We have to stop talking and do something. Public and political support for football is jeopardised because of the miserable situation at Fifa. We fully respect the principle of self-regulation, but on one condition: that good governance is guaranteed.”
Lord Triesman, the former FA chairman who oversaw England’s 2018 bid until he was forced out by a newspaper sting, said change was long overdue and that Sepp Blatter presided over “a deeply flawed set of people”. He added that “tinkering with the arrangements” would not be enough to change Fifa’s culture. “Had this been the chairman of a publicly quoted company they could not have survived this series of scandals,” he said of the Fifa president.
The disputed votes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups should not stand, he argued, because around 50% of the executive committee had since left under a cloud. “There is no reason for people to assume that people should be treated as heads of state because they happen to be running a football organisation. It is an absurd way of looking at the world.”
Blatter will stand again for a fifth term as president in May and is likely to be opposed by the Uefa-backed Jordanian candidate Prince Ali. Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the former head of the Chilean FA, said he would decide in the next week whether to stand. That would leave him just days to gather the necessary five nominations from among the 209 Fifa members by the 29 January deadline.
But he said he had already spoken to several FAs who would be prepared to back him if he did stand. Outlining his plans, Mayne-Nicholls backed the idea of a maximum eight-year term limit for the Fifa president, the introduction of sin bins and greater transparency. “Fifa must publish all salaries, daily allowances and so on,” he said. “Contracts with third parties must also be published, with ultimate owners made clear.”
Jaimie Fuller, president of the sportswear brand Skins who led a campaign for change in cycling and is now backing New Fifa Now, said he had invited five Fifa sponsors to attend the summit but none had replied. “Fifa’s reputation has fallen too far. Whatever the outcome of the May election, Fifa must be dragged kicking and screaming into change,” he said.
Jérôme Champagne, the former senior Fifa executive who is also standing for the presidency but has yet to acquire the five required nominations, called for reform from within. “Anti Fifa-ism is a danger. We need a strong Fifa.”
He also said Qatar should be given a year to prove it was making progress on the issue of migrant workers rights or risk losing the 2022 World Cup. “We cannot stand for the systematic exploitation of workers from the valleys of Nepal. We cannot celebrate football knowing this.”
Guardian
