Monday, May 17, 2010

See you at the (World Cup) party in 2018 (contnued)...


The chairman of the England 2018 World Cup bid and the FA has stood down after what he has called his "entrapment" by a Sunday newspaper.

An article in the Mail on Sunday claimed Lord Treisman suggested Spain could drop its 2018 bid if rival bidder Russia helped bribe referees at this summer's World Cup.

The England 2018 team has apologised to the Russian and Spanish FAs as it tries to rescue the World Cup bid with a Fifa decision due in December. However England's World Cup bid is to be investigated by Fifa, after football's world governing body announced that its ethics committee was to examine the allegations made by the peer.
Lord Triesman quits FA and 2018 World Cup bid jobs

If Lord Treisman did indeed make the alleged comments about England's rival bidders for the 2018 World Cup, then the Mail on Sunday had every right to publish those comments and he was equally right to resign.

The media should always strive to publish the truth, whether that be good or bad - that is their profession. However the method used to obtain this story (secretly taped conversations by Melissa Jacobs, a former aide), does raise uneasy questions about eavesdropping on public figures.

In a way though, I'm not upset if England does lose the 2018 World Cup bid - I had a few issues about the idea when it was first raised back in 2007 and those issues still need addressing, especially in these cash-strapped times.

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