Media ‘killed’ England’s World Cup 2018 bid

Bid chief executive Andy Anson, told journalists in Zurich that four Fifa delegates who had promised to support England’s World Cup bid had all told him that media coverage had killed the bid.

England was knocked out in the first round of voting – winning the support of just two of the 22 delegates – despite being the late favourites to host the tournament.

The competition will instead be held in Russia.

Speaking at a press conference in Zurich, Andy Anson said: “We have spoken to some executive committee members. And I’ll be very clear that what they are saying to us is one thing.

“I’ll caveat this by saying this is not our excuse at all. But they are saying to us that our media killed us. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe that for one minute”

England’s turbulent bid to host the World Cup in 2018 was rocked by a Sunday Times article in October which alleged two Fifa members offered to sell their votes.

Read more: Football writer Jonathan Wilson on what winning the World Cup in 2018 means for Russia 

Undercover journalists

The newspaper reported that their undercover journalists, posing as US lobbyists, separately approached Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii who each asked for money for their vote.

Earlier this week a Panorama documentary claimed three other Fifa officials had accepted bribes in the 1990s.

Mr Anson said: “My only issue, as you know, with the Sunday Times and the BBC, and more the BBC, was the timing of it.

“For us, it was almost impossible to bounce back with three or four weeks to go.

“And then in the last week to actually know that Fifa executive committee members were saying to us that our media is killing us.”

Mr Anson said four Fifa delegates said they would have voted for England had it not been for the media.

World Cup voting

Andy Anson called for changes to the World Cup voting process.

Only 22 of Fifa’s 208 national football associations were included in the ballot, and the voting pattern of individual delegates was kept secret.

“You have got to open it up to all the member associations. You’ve got to widen the electorate,” he said.

“For me, you should have transparency and open voting so that everyone knows who voted for whom, because I don’t believe that the secret ballot actually helps transparency at all and it leads to the situation we had yesterday where people promise you something and don’t deliver.”

Mr Anson continued: “I still find what happened yesterday hard to understand and hard to believe.”

He said the team went to bed feeling the bid had “room to manoeuvre” in terms of votes, and were confident they would get through the first round.

“To then find you only get two votes is tough and I’m still finding that hard to believe,” he said.

The most interesting thing from the press conference was Andy Anson saying it's just not worth England bidding again unless Fifa changes the rules writes Channel 4 News' Keme Nzerem.

It's now pretty clear that the only person England persuaded to vote for them was Issa Hayatou - the same man accused by Panorama of corruption. Irony of ironies.

Team England thought they had between six and eight votes they could rely on which means between four and six of the delegates were lying to them. Or England were just naïve.

Perhaps the most important was Jack Warner, president of the Concacaf federation of countries from the Caribbean, north and central America, who controlled three votes.

This morning he was asked whether he had lied to Prince William and what happened to the English vote. He refused to make any comment

English Football is once again navel-gazing wondering where it all went wrong.

As well as calling for reform of Fifa, should English football chiefs have been wiser to the ways of football's governing body?

‘Shocking’

England’s bid cost £15m and attracted widespread support from politicians and the public.

The Prime Minister, Prince William and David Beckham all travelled to Zurich in the days before the vote to lobby for support.

One sports analyst told Channel 4 News the decision was “shocking”.

Heino Vockrodt from Catalyst said: “The blatant disregard by the committee of the technical strengths of the losing applicants will do little in the peoples’ minds to cast aside any allegations of bid tampering.

“Instead, the vote was given to the weakest applicant on paper in each category.

“This could be perceived as having all the hallmarks of Sepp Blatter wanting to leave the legacy of the man who brought football to even the farthest corners of the planet.”