By Andrew Warshaw
May 23 – The head of US Soccer says has reiterated his country will only target the 2026 World Cup if FIFA’s bidding rules are significantly tightened up – including votes being made public. Sunil Gulati and other senior executives within his CONCACAF confederation have long been uncomfortable with the way the joint ballots for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments were conducted.
Although FIFA, as part of its reform process, have pledged to open the voting procedure for future World Cups to its entire membership rather than to its elite executive committee as a result of the spate of corruption allegations that rocked the organisation’s credibility, Gulati believes this does not go far enough in terms of what should and should not be permitted during the bid campaigns.
Although it has not been found to have broken any rules, Qatar’s landslide 2022 World Cup victory has come under intense scrutiny ever since the December 2010 vote.
The US lost out to Qatar in the final round of voting and speaking during a panel discussion at a Leaders in Sport Summit in New York, Gulati was asked whether 2026 was now a possibility.
“The answer is maybe,” he said. “Maybe we’ll bid, we’re not going to bid unless the rules of the game are changed.”
Qatar’s 2022 victory came despite a FIFA technical report warning of the dangers of staging the tournament in the nation’s searing summer months. FIFA president Sepp Blatter has admitted that overlooking such recommendations regarding a summer World Cup had been “a mistake” and has hinted on more than one occasion that “political pressure” was brought to bear during the voting process.
FIFA’s ethics investigator Michael Garcia has been studying allegations of misconduct in the entire bid process and is expected to produce his eagerly awaited report by the end of this year or early next year.
“The rules of bidding and some of the other governance procedures at FIFA need to change,” said Gulati, US soccer federation president who is now a FIFA executive committee member himself. “I’ve said that before I was on the Executive Committee, and I still believe it.
“I could outline a number of those things, but we’re not prepared to bid if the rules don’t change. The technical reports need to mean more. As far as I’m concerned, there should be a public disclosure of votes.
“There’s no reason, and the IOC made this change, that executive committee members, or in the next case all federation presidents, need to visit member countries to see if they have an airport, and on and on and on. It’s not normal, and customary gifts, there’s got to be a limit financially.”
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