ANDY WARSHAW, Los Angeles | Wednesday 1.15pm.
WORLD football governing body FIFA has pushed back the date of next year’s vote for the 2006 World Cup by four months, throwing into turmoil the carefully laid plans of the five candidates — England, Germany, South Africa, Morocco and Brazil.
In a separate development, FIFA also announced that Europe will be giving up half a place at the next finals in 2002 and handing it to Asia, which is jointly hosting the tournament. The 24-man FIFA executive committee was expected merely to select a date for a March vote when it came to discussing the 2006 World Cup. Instead, it decided on Tuesday to delay the vote until July to allow all five bids to be studied by the individual Continental congresses.
By March, the original date of the vote, only South America and Africa will have staged their congresses. UEFA, representing Europe, do not hold theirs until June 30. As a result, said FIFA president Sepp Blatter, ”it was decided to put all confederations and candidates on an equal footing.”
England’s campaign team, led by Alec McGivan, were not immediately perturbed by the sudden change. ”Several members of executive committee felt it was important that each bid presented itself to their confederations,” said McGivan. ”Obviously it prolongs the agony but we’d be very happy to go to every confederation in the world at any time.”
Chuck Blazer, general secretary of CONCACAF which covers north and central America and who proposed the four-month delay, said all he was doing was being fair to the candidates and confederations alike. ”Traditionally, World Cup votes are only taken after each Continental congress. This was the first time that would not have happened,” he said. ”It is only right that the representative confederations of the executive committee members get a chance to study the bids.”
The new date also means that the deadline for submitting full and detailed bid documents to FIFA has been extended. Candidates now have until August 10 to hand in their bids, instead of July 31. –Reuters