FA rejects FIFA World Cup report criticism

England's Football Association today rejected claims by world governing body FIFA's ethics committee that it violated bidding rules in its unsuccessful bid to host the 2018 World Cup.
In a report released today, the ethics committee cleared Qatar over corruption allegations regarding its successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup and criticised England's failed attempt to host the 2018 tournament, which was awarded to Russia.
The England bid team is accused of having broken rules in its attempts to win the support of disgraced former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, who quit his role in 2011 amid bribery allegations.
But in a statement published on its website, the FA said: "We do not accept any criticism regarding the integrity of England's bid or any of the individuals involved.

"We conducted a transparent bid and, as the report demonstrates with its reference to the England bid team's 'full and valuable cooperation', willingly complied with the investigation.
"We maintain that transparency and cooperation around this entire process from all involved is crucial to its credibility."

The FA added: "We also note that after a lengthy investigatory process and assessment, the report has concluded that the 'potentially problematic facts and circumstances identified by the report regarding the England 2018 bid were, all in all, not suited to compromise the integrity of the FIFA World Cup 2018/22 bidding process as a whole'."

FA chairman Greg Dyke, who was not involved in England's bid for the 2018 World Cup, said that his organisation had effectively been penalised for cooperating with FIFA's investigators.
"Those (countries) who co-operated the most seemed to be the ones that gave them the information by which they were then criticised, like the FA," he told Sky Sports News.
"Others, who didn't co-operate, didn't get criticised at all. Well, there's a surprise."
He added: "I don't think anyone will accuse the FA of anything other than behaving properly.