FIFA Wants to Clear Things Up about the World Cup Voting

Added by Tania Sullivan on October 29, 2010

On Thursday, FIFA`s executive committee will have a meeting it regard to the confusion about the World Cup bidding process, that was involved in a corruption scandal. The meeting will last for two days.

The hosts of the World Cups in 2018 and 2022 will be chosen in Zurich on December 2, but it is unclear how many voters there will be.

The voting process is still not announced, but the bidders – Russia, England, Spain/Portugal and Belgium/Netherlands for 2018 and Japan, South Korea, Australia, United States and Qatar for 2022 – report they will not be troubled by this and will carry on as planned.

Alexei Sorokin claims that the scandal has no effect on the Russian bidding process, and he told the International Football Arena conference in Zurich the following:  “Actually, it hasn’t had any effect. We’re doing as we did before. Today, we don’t know the number of executive committee members who will vote. Other than that, we don’t see any impact. We are still concentrating on presenting our case”.

Reynald Temarii of Tahiti and Amus Adamu of Nigeria were suspended provisionally, being accused of selling their votes, and FIFA’s ethics committee will make a decision by November, the election on December 2 having only 22 or 23 voters if the suspensions would be extended.

Decisions taken during this two-day meeting will be made public through a media conference that will be held on Friday, 9.00 AM Eastern Time.