FIFA dismisses complaints
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FIFA'S general secretary defended the process for choosing the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups on Tuesday, but did not rule out the possibility of changing it for 2026.
Jerome Valcke said FIFA has until 2018 to decide if it "should or (should) not change" the way host countries are decided. But he said last week's vote for the World Cup hosts was "perfectly organized, perfectly transparent and perfectly under control."
Russia beat bids from England, Belgium-Netherlands and Spain-Portugal for 2018. Qatar, which was criticized by FIFA for the heat and its small size, won the 2022 vote ahead of Australia, Japan, United States, and South Korea. The vote was greeted with shock, in particular in England and the United States, and sparked allegations that the entire process was too secretive and open to corruption.
Ahead of the vote in Zurich, FIFA's committee members faced intense media scrutiny in Britain about alleged corruption and vote-trading.
FIFA vice president Jack Warner blamed those investigations for England's failure in the 2018 vote.
"The FIFA ExCo as a body could not have voted for England, having been insulted by their media in the worst possible way at the same time," Warner said on Tuesday. "To do so would have been the ultimate insult (to FIFA)."
Valcke rejected criticism that the system is too secretive.
"If we say yes, yes it does not work, we would recognize something went wrong," said Valcke. "I'm sorry to say we have organized a voting system which was very transparent.
"If the question is it's not transparent because you don't know who voted for whom, you will never know for whom I voted for between Nicolas Sarkozy and (French Socialist politician) Segolene Royal three years ago when the election took place. I will not tell because that is my freedom to decide for whom I voted without having to say publicly my choice."
Chuck Blazer, a FIFA executive committee member from the United States, insisted "the process had not failed at all," and hit out at the stream of media reports alleging wrongdoing among voters.
