England complain about Russia chief
Reuters - Tuesday 26 October 2010, 13:58
ZURICH - England's 2018 World Cup bid team
lodged a formal complaint with FIFA on Tuesday against the chief
of rivals Russia who later offered to apologise to them for the
"misunderstanding" over critical comments attributed to him.
An England spokesman confirmed a complaint as the bidding
process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, already tainted by
allegations of vote-selling against two members of FIFA's
executive committee, ran into more trouble.
GEAR: Save 10% on the brand new England home shirt, courtesy of online retailer Kitbag
England said the complaint referred to comments made by
Russian 2018 bid chief Alexei Sorokin, who reportedly spoke
about London's high crime rate and levels of alcohol consumption
in an interview with the local Sport-Express paper.
"It's no secret that London has the highest crime rate when
compared with other European cities, and the highest level of
alcohol consumption among young people," he was quoted as saying
earlier this month.
FIFA, who did not immediately comment, forbid competing
nations from making any comments about rival bidders.
Sorokin told Reuters on Tuesday that Russian officials could
send a formal letter to FIFA and the English bid if necessary to
explain themselves, although he said his words had been
distorted.
"I can only apologise for this misunderstanding," he said.
"We have the tapes of the interview and I know for a fact that I
didn't break any rules.
"I did not try to hurt or discredit our bid rivals, there
was no malice intended, I'm 100 percent sure of that."
"I am really sorry that because of several interpretations
my interview was distorted," Sorokin said. "In the interview I
used London's problems as an example. Such things are part of
life in any big city.
"If you're talking specifically about my interview in the
Sport-Express and what the British media made out of it, I must
say my words have been distorted in three different stages,
creating all the fuss," he said.
"First, people in the Sport-Express had interpreted some of
my comments in a vague way, not exactly what I was trying to
express.
LOST IN TRANSLATION
"Second, much of it was lost in translation from Russian
into English and then, the rest was made up by the English
journalists themselves," he added.
"Because of all these things the final content came out in a
wrong way."
Last week, FIFA provisionally suspended two members of the
executive committeee over allegations that they offered to sell
their votes for the two World Cup hosts to undercover newspaper
reporters.
FIFA are also investigating claims of collusion and
vote-swapping between unnamed bidders for the 2018 and 2022
bids.
FIFA's ethics committee is due to produce its verdict in
mid-November, only two weeks before the December 2 vote in Zurich
for the hosts of the two tournaments.
"Russia will win the right to host the 2018 World Cup
despite all these corruption scandals," Sergei Fursenko,
president of the Russian FA, told local media on Tuesday.
"I think they (scandals) will not affect the Russian bid in
any way, because we are just doing our work and not paying any
attention to all this negative (publicity)."
The Japanese and Australian 2022 bids said they were
ignoring the troubles at FIFA.
"We have to stay focused on our plan and strategy, which is
to convince the world that Australia has the capacity to do
justice to the world's biggest event," Ben Buckley, chief
executive Australia 2022 bid, told the annual International
Football Arena conference in Zurich.
"We don't change our strategy because of that."
Yuuichiro Nakajima, executive director of Japan's bid
committee, said. "It's all conjecture, rumours, nothing which
appears to have been proved. We are not in a position to comment
on that."
Russia and England are bidding for the 2018 finals along
with joint bids from Spain/Portugal and Belgium/Netherlands. The
United States, Japan, South Korea, Qatar and Australia are the
candidates for the 2022 tournament.