The tell-all memoir of David Davies, the former executive director of the English Football Association, continues to leak its pre-publication scoops to the U.K. media. The latest revelation is that the FA was offered the chance to buy votes while bidding for the 2006 World Cup.
The call to the FA offering to set up bribes was made by a middleman "well-connected in international footballing circles," but unnamed in the book on the advice of Davies' lawyers. The middleman was asked to ring back twice so that the FA could verify his identity. "Those of us who heard this corrupt proposal were shocked," says Davies, implying that he hasn't been paying much attention to the way that soccer's world governing body FIFA has been run these past 40 years.
The FA took its evidence to FIFA, but "to this day I have no knowledge of what they did or didn't do about it," Davies said. "We were not left in any doubt. Financial sweeteners could help bring in 2006 votes. Some other countries could take short cuts, could walk in the sport's shadows. Not us. We were the FA, guardians of the game's spirit and ethics. However pompous that mission statement can sound, it defined our attitude."
Davies declined to name the shadowy middleman and "would say only that the individual was foreign and was not a member of the FIFA executive committee," writes Matt Dickinson, "but he reiterated his belief that it was a genuine offer." Davies meanwhile defended the FA's lavish hospitality for visiting FIFA dignitaries as it bids for the 2018 World Cup: "You can't ask people to come from the other side of the world and give them a pie and a pint."
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