2018 World Cup

Evening Standard

Fighting back: Michel D'Hooghe. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

Michel D’Hooghe, for all his quarter of a century on the FIFA executive, has never courted publicity, unlike his soundbite-savvy president Sepp Blatter. But now the 66-year-old retired Belgian doctor, who has shaped FIFA’s medical department and is proud of their doping controls, is upset about the slur on his reputation.

We are in Monaco and D’Hooghe, having just emerged from a swim at his hotel, wants to talk about a painting he received from the Russians before his fellow executive members chose them as hosts for the 2018 World Cup.

The implication by a Sunday newspaper was that this was yet another case of vote buying in a world body which seem to produce corruption scandals almost every day. Before the Belgian explains for the first time why the inference is false, he recounts a story of an earlier bid involving Guy Verhofstadt, the Belgian Prime Minister in 2000, and Nelson Mandela.

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Insideworldfootball

Like the dog that did not bark in the night in the Sherlock Holmes mystery,The Hound of the Baskervilles, one of the most fascinating aspects of the FIFA crisis is that one group has said nothing: the players.

It is astonishing to consider, given all that has been written about the problems of FIFA, that there is very little about what the players think. Their silence has been stunning.

Without the players, there can be no game and the fact that they have had nothing to say about this, the greatest crisis to face the governing body of the world game, shows how sport, for all the talk that it is a business, is not really a business. And why it may prove so difficult to restructure an organisation like FIFA and make sure it is fit for purpose.

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Insideworldfootball.biz

FIFA is facing its own News International moment with its corruption scandal. News International thought that by saying phone hacking was the work of one rogue reporter, Clive Goodman, the royal correspondent, and his confidant Glenn Mulcaire, it could isolate the problem. As the world now knows, it could not.

FIFA is in danger of making a similar mistake if it thinks the corruption scandal has been dealt with once the Ethics Committee finishes its work on July 23. Let us consider what is in store for this day.

On that day, we shall know the fate of Mohammed Bin Hammam for his alleged attempt, in May, to bribe members of the Caribbean Football Union in Trinidad during his aborted FIFA presidential campaign. It is alleged that bribes of $40,000 (£24,000) were paid or offered to each member. Caribbean Football Union officials Debbie Minguell and Jason Sylvester, who were suspended along with then FIFA vice-president, Jack Warner, will also hear their fate.

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Evening Standard

Damning report: select committee chairman Whittingdale and their scathing criticism of FIFA. Image courtesy of Evening Standard

John Whittingdale accepts that England could be seen as bad losers. We are discussing today’s report by the Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport on the failed 2018 World Cup bid, which says it is “appalling” how FIFA have swept aside “allegations of corruption” against members of its executive. To make matters worse, say the MPs, FIFA are treating those making the allegations with “contempt”.

“There is a danger that, having got a derisory two votes, one of them English, we will be accused of sour grapes,” says Whittingdale, chairman of the committee. “But it is not. The evidence of corruption is overwhelming.

“We have some criticism about the England bid. But there was substantial corruption in the process and that was an additional hurdle and put a huge question mark over the entire bid.”

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Insideworldfootball.biz

The last few weeks have hardly been an advertisement for world football with corruption scandals engulfing FIFA, but for Alexey Sorokin, chief executive of the Russian 2018 organising committee, none of this will dim the glory of the World Cup.

“No, no”, he tells me, “all the controversies in the world cannot take the glitter away from the World Cup.

“The event is of such magnitude that, no matter what happens around it, it’s still going to be a great event.

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