FA Vice-Chair David Gill believes that England could put in a "strong bid" to host the 2030 World Cup finals, providing FIFA's voting system is "shown to be free of malpractice," according to Matt Dickinson of the LONDON TIMES. The FA has a policy of not bidding for any FIFA tournament, "even at junior level," as long as Sepp Blatter is president. The organization was "badly burnt by the failed bid" for the 2018 tournament, which cost more than £20M and yielded two votes. Assuming that even Blatter will "have to step aside one day," most likely in '19, he will have gone before the 2030 bidding. By then the FA will have observed if the 2026 process, for which the U.S. is the favorite, "seems a fair one, given that the vote will no longer be taken by the executive committee but a poll of 209 member nations." Gill: "We should see how that process goes. That will be in 2017 and, yes, if the process is fair and appropriate, then we should think about a bid. It takes a lot of work -- Government, local authorities, the FA, clubs -- and we know from past experience that we need to be sure what we are getting into. But the change to the voting is one way that FIFA appears to be improving its governance" (LONDON TIMES, 3/30).
CALL FOR CHANGE: ESPN's Stephan Uersfeld reported FIFA whistleblower Bonita Mersiades, head of communications for the Australia 2022 World Cup bid until Jan. '10, has urged leading European clubs to "put pressure on world football's governing body to reform." Mersiades and Phaedra al-Majid -- who worked for the Qatari bid -- spoke to investigator Michael Garcia as he "compiled his report into possible corruption during the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups." Mersiades said she wanted "a big European club to go public with the question: Do we need FIFA?" She added, "That's how pressure for a reform process builds. Eckert did what Blatter wanted -- to say that FIFA did everything right and to claim that there are two women out there who are not trustworthy" (ESPN, 3/30).
