Left field

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

FIFA battens down the hatches as allegations mount

The chill winds of corruption allegations swirling once again around FIFA's Zurich HQ have got world soccer's bosses busy battening down the hatches in the forlorn hope that, if ignored, they will all just blow away.

But if they were to peep out of the windows of their ivory tower overlooking the Swiss financial centre they might see that, in the eyes of much of the world, it is their credibility that is blown and that the process of selecting the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals has been seriously tainted.

Allegations aired in a British television documentary by the BBC that three long-standing members of FIFA's executive committee had received bribes from the body's marketing partners ISL and that a FIFA vice-president had ordered World Cup tickets for himself to sell on to touts were bad enough.

Those claims followed hot on the heels of an entrapment operation on FIFA bosses by London's Sunday Times. The newspaper sting resulted in two executive committee members being fined and excluded from office for indicating their willingness to "sell" their votes to the best bidder in Thursday's ballot.