MPs Implore English, Scottish And Welsh FAs To Push For Fifa Reform

Fifa Risk Becoming 'A Sham'

MPs have written to the English, Scottish and Welsh Football Associations over concerns Fifa's reform pledge risks becoming "a sham".

The cross-party group of MPs have urged the trio of FAs to push for change at Fifa's annual congress in Mauritius in May.

Conservative MPs Damian Collins and Alun Cairns, Labour's Jim Sheridan and the Liberal Democrats' Adrian Sanders have made the requests, two days before the deadline national associations have to add items to the agenda.

The BBC says, in a letter addressed to FA chairman David Bernstein, Collins wrote: "The impression has been created that Sepp Blatter and the Fifa executive committee have no serious commitment to reform, and that the whole process has been a sham.

"According to Fifa statutes, any member may make a request for an item to be included on the agenda for the Congress, and I would like to ask if the FA would submit a proposal for the four key recommendations for reform recently presented by the Independent Governance Committee to be debated and voted on."

Collins added it was vital Fifa showed transparency regarding personal and collective finances.

"These issues are of real concern to football fans around the world," he continued. "To many the Fifa executive committee look like a group of hard-faced men who have done very well out of football."

Only yesterday, one of Fifa's leading advisers, Alexandra Wrage, said she was "frustrated and surprised" that Fifa was "neutering" recommendations for its reform.

The cross-party request risks reigniting the English FA's cold war with Fifa following the fall-out from the 2018 World Cup bid.

The English FA was castigated in 2011 when it failed to have the farcical Fifa presidential election postponed.

Blatter won the 2011 unopposed

FA chairman David Bernstein implored the 208 Fifa member associations to stop Sepp Blatter being re-elected unopposed, however they voted by 172 votes to 17 against the proposal. Fifa's senior vice-president Julio Grondona added England is "always complaining".

Collins is well versed with Fifa's reputation, having been a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (CMSC) when it chaired a British parliamentary inquiry into the governance of football in England, as well as the country's failure to secure the right to host the 2018 World Cup finals.

Former FA chairman Lord Triesman claimed in May 2011 four Fifa members sought sought "bribes" in return for backing the failed 2018 bid, which gained just two votes as they bowed out in the first round of voting. Russia controversially won the right to host the 21st World Cup, and the CMSC called for a "full, independent investigation" of the bidding processes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Warner has faced past allegations of corruption

The FBI's own probe into corruption in international football was boosted by the addition of Jack Warner's son, Daryan, as a cooperating witness.

Since the summer of 2011, the FBI has been examining payments of more than $500,000 made by the Caribbean Football Union to an offshore company headed by top U.S. soccer official Chuck Blazer over the last 20 years. Jack Warner was head of the CFU, a position he held between 1983 and 2011.

Now national security minister in his native Trinidad and Tobago, Warner was previously Fifa vice-president head of the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF). He has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

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