England cry foul over World Cup bid failure

Infamous five
England bid chief executive Andy Anson said as many as five or six of the FIFA members had promised their vote in meetings with Prince William, David Cameron, David Beckham and bid officials only to break those guarantees.

Anson said: "They are saying to us that our media killed us but I don't believe that for one minute. My only issue with the Sunday Times and more the BBC Panorama was the timing of it.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush: individual members promised to vote for us and didn't, clearly.
"That's difficult to stomach when they have given you assurances.

We thought we would get seven or eight but not that five or six would leave us, that's quite a big percentage of the ones we had been promised."

Among those thought to have given their assurances include FIFA vice-president Jack Warner of Trinidad, who voted as part of a three-man bloc with USA and Guatemala members. Anson said: "I think they probably did vote as a bloc, but not for us sadly."

Turkey chickened out?
Another broken promise came from Turkey's Senes Erzik, a long-time friend of FIFA member Geoff Thompson. Yesterday morning the England bid received information from the Foreign Office that Turkish diplomatic sources had said Erzik would not support England.

Thompson asked him for assurances just an hour before the vote, and received them. Afterwards, Erzik said merely: "It was nothing personal, just business."

Those who emerged with more credit were African president Issa Hayatou who apparently did honour his pledge, Japan's Junji Ogura, who explained before the vote he had agreed to vote instead for Holland/Belgium, and even FIFA president Sepp Blatter, supporting Russia.

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