Greg Dyke, the chairman of the Football Association, has written to every FIFA executive committee member calling for "urgent action" to ensure ethics investigator Michael Garcia's report into World Cup bidding is published in full.
Dyke's action follows Garcia's move to appeal against the decision by Hans-Joachim Eckert, the FIFA ethics committee judge, to clear Russia and Qatar to host the 2018 and 2022 tournaments, having found no serious breaches of bidding rules by either nation. Eckert's findings suggested there was no reason to rerun the bidding and criticised England 2018 for its relationship with disgraced former FIFA executive member Jack Warner.
Eckert has refused to published the full report and Dyke has stated that public confidence in FIFA has hit a new low while there is "compelling evidence" of wrongdoing.
The decision to send letters to every executive committee member comes after his predecessor as FA chairman, David Bernstein, urged European nations to boycott the 2018 World Cup unless FIFA undergoes more reforms.
The letters read: "As you probably know the reputation of FIFA was already low in England and much of Europe before the events of last week. The failure to publish Mr Garcia's report, and his statement that the summary report which was published contained 'numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations', has resulted in a further decline in public confidence of FIFA. We cannot go on like this. Complete transparency is required if the actions of those who bid, including England 2018, are to be judged fairly."
In his letters, Dyke also demands that media reports about FIFA and the 2022 World Cup in Qatar are not dismissed in the same way that Sepp Blatter, the FIFA president, dismissed them in June. Dyke wrote: "I know some of you believe that FIFA's reputation in England is the result of an obsession amongst the English media with FIFA and I know Mr Blatter sees their reports as an unfair attack on the organisation he leads.
"However, in England we see it differently. The reports . . . do provide compelling evidence of wrongdoing. They cannot be simply dismissed as 'racist' or 'an attack on FIFA' as Mr Blatter described them in Brazil.
"Urgent action is needed if confidence in FIFA is to be rebuilt in England. The FA believe this action should start with the full publication of Mr Garcia's report."
Bernstein, meanwhile, has resigned from his role on FIFA's anti-discrimination task force and called for a European boycott of the World Cup. That would be unfeasible for UEFA given that one of their members, Russia, although the European body is understood to be deeply unhappy about events at FIFA.
"There are 54 countries within UEFA," said Bernstein. "There's Germany, Spain, Italy, France and Holland - all powerful. You can't hold a serious World Cup without them. They have the power if they have the will. The choosing of Qatar was clearly ludicrous. It was like an Alice in Wonderland sort of decision."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article