Nov 02, 2015 Speaking during a Culture, Media and Sports committee hearing with British parliamentarians, the chairman of the English Football Association, Greg Dyke recently criticized comments made my suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter.
79-year-old Blatter recently said during an interview with Russia’s TASS news agency, that he was a ball in a big political power game involving the United States and Russia. Sepp Blatter also criticized UEFA’s Michel Platini for playing a part in attacks on him.
Responding to this, Dyke said:
“There’s nothing that Mr Blatter says that surprises me much really. I honestly don’t know what it means, if it means… I mean it’s obviously a criticism of Mr (Michel) Platini because he says Mr Platini swung some votes to vote for Qatar. But it basically says “We wanted Russia and then we wanted Qatar”. And it looks like it was fixed, he wanted that before there was any vote. But I’ve only recently read it, first of all I’d like to read it again and read it in more detail, I’d then like our people to go through it, but it does look like it’s suggesting that it was all fixed anyway.”
FIFA’s Ethics Committee recently suspended both Blatter and Platini from any involvement in the sport for 90 days. Although the Committee didn’t detail specific allegations against them, Swiss authorities said they had launched a criminal investigation into Blatter.
Dyke went on to say that the FA’s main concern was the reform of FIFA, rather than who is chosen to run it.
“We’ve said on many occasions that the reform of FIFA is more important to us than who is the new president, because from the very beginning we’ve said the great danger is that you get a Blatter mark two… or you could even say Blatter was mark two because (former FIFA President Joao) Havelange was equally suspect before him, and what matters is the reform programme in FIFA as much as who becomes president of FIFA,”