Too late for England World Cup bid say Spain: 'All the fish are sold'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/nov/23/england-world-cup-bid-spain


Summary:

It seems that Spain/Portugal will be hosting the 2018 World Cup. England one of the main rivals seems not to be able to win as Spain/Portugal claims to have 8 of the 22 votes. Predicting the race, the chief executive Miguel Angel López said that it would be a close race. England seems convinced that they will be able to secure at least seven votes required to progress through the first round of voting. In total there are four bidders, who also include Russia and Holland/Belguim and if none of the four receive an absolute majority in the first round of voting then the one with the lowest number of votes will drop out and the voting will be repeated until a us host declared. The Spain/Portugal bid was investigated by Fifa due to claims of working together with Qatar’s 2022 bid that was said to have secured a bloc of at least seven votes. But according to the Fifa’s ethics committee there were not “sufficient grounds” to prove that was the case. López also claims that if there was been substance to the allegations of vote trading that the ethics committee would have found something. And by López’s optimism that they secured the support of the four Asian delegates, would be a severe blow to England. The votes of three South American executives seem to be also in the pocket of Spain/Portugal due the connection with Latin America.

Opinion:

I think the race is exciting and interesting to watch because the result will have a great result on the World Cup and the country. As we could see the last World Cup South Africa there were not many people from Europe due to the fear for the criminal activities in South Africa, this resulted in a somewhat disappoiting atmosphere during the matches. As a viewer i did not get the real World Cup feeling of the previous World Cups. I do not really care in which country the World Cup 2018 will be held, although it would be nice if it was close so it will be easy to go to a game. As far as the allegations of the claims I can not really offer an opinion because there is not enough information about the different parties and on what the allegations are based on.