England FA chairman, Greg Dyke has repeatedly said that the bid for the hosting rights to the 2022 World Cup should be re-opened if there was evidence that corrupt practices facilitated Qatar’s successful bid.

He is not alone in this position especially since fifa, the world football organising body came under heat for sharp practices that allegedly influenced their decisions ranging in the awards of World Cup hosting rights.

“If I were the organisers of the 2022 World Cup I would not sleep tonight,” England FA chairman Greg Dyke said on the day fifa President Sepp Blatter resigned last week. Dyke was one of those who campaigned for the ouster of Blatter. The Swiss announced that he would be stepping down after winning election for another term of four years.

“If the evidence for the 2022 World Cup bid process shows that it was above board, fine,” Dyke was quoted as saying on The Mail Online today.
“If it shows that they were corrupt, obviously, the bid should be redone.”

Investigators are still battling to nail Russia and Qatar but nothing has been overwhelmingly incriminating about their bids. Interestingly, there are dents on some of the recent World Cups and the investigators are still hopeful that Russia and Qatar may not escape the banana peel.

However, evidence on Ivory Coast’s Jacques Anouma, before now, the major suspected player in the alleged Qatar bribery has been rubbished by the alibi pleaded by Anouma himself.

Phaedra Almajid, a former member of the Qatar Bid Committee started the aspersion on Qatar when she alleged that three Africans including Anouma collected $1.5m bribe from Qatar to vote for them. While her claim is still being investigated Anouma has proved that he was not even at the venue that he was alleged to have collected the bribe.

He said no such thing ever happened and that he had never met Almajid or known her. Anouma, a former member of the fifa executive committee repeated his claim in a interview he granted Randio France International on Sunday. He described Almajid’s accusations as baseless, emphasizing that he was not even in Angola when Almajid claimed that they were bribed. Said he:

“You have someone who goes one morning on a TV station , decided to say that three Africans including myself would have collected $ 1.5 million to give our vote to Qatar without any proof .

I will not talk of President Issa Hayatou, nor the Egyptian, who were also mentioned. I’ll talk about myself. This woman (Phaedra Almajid, a former member of the Qatar Bid Committee) , this is not the first time she made these allegations “.

“I ( anouma) repeat that this is not her first time. She had already launched these accusations and they were published in the English parliament hearing. And after, she retracted her allegations, asking us not to sue in court. And I did not sue her. Few months later, she made a statement to say that there were African leaders who were received in a hotel room in Angola without giving names. And curiously on a German television studio, she brings names including mine. In this case, those who disseminate such information should ensure that they have the truth.

“The case is now in court. She is referring to a period in Angola during the Africa Cup of Nations in 2010, on the eve of the General Assembly.
Unfortunately for her, I was in Côte d’Ivoire, three days before the General Assembly of CAF, I was in Ivory Coast. So I do not know when she saw me in a hotel room in Angola. I have not responded so far because the case is in court.

I have never met this lady. I have not attended this general meeting because I was with my national team, we got back to Abidjan where I had to explain my elimination by Algeria in the quarter- final, “explained Anouma

. “For the last 3 weeks , there are allegations on Qatar in the media made by a that I have never. Today the case is in the hand of the Swiss court. Let the Swiss justice go to the end of its investigation to find out who is guilty and who is not,”
” I received several calls because it looked like I would have been questioned and arrested, as well as Issa Hayatou, by the Swiss court . All these not are true “concluded Anouma. Evidence from his passport reportedly proved that he was not in Angola at the time the alleged bribe was being given to the Africans.