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FIFA, the international governing body of association football, futsal, and beach soccer, sent on Friday a six-page warning letter signed by its secretary-general Fatma Samoura to the organization's 211 football member federations. The integrity warning «appears to take aim at Morocco», according to New York Times.
The issue, according to the American newspaper, warns football federations against accepting any inducements from World Cup bid committees in the period before the vote, schedueled this summer. It also indicates that these temptations can affect the integrity of the vote.
«All members of the FIFA Council and delegates of the FIFA Congress should take their personal shortlisting or selection decision on the basis of their own assessment of the merits of the bids without being influenced by supportive or adverse comments of other officials», wrote FIFA's secretary-general.
«Therefore, all officials are requested to refrain from expressing publicly their personal opinion about the merits of one or more bids during the bidding procedure».
Samoura was referring to the two nations bidding to host the international tournament, namely Morocco and America, including USA, Canada and Mexico which launched a joint bid.
Learning from the past
This decision comes as the Royal Moroccan Football Federation discussed this month the possibility of formalizing relations with the Confederation of African Football (CAF). This collaboration would allow African teams to benefit from training camps in Morocco as well as contributing in developing football in the continent.
According to the New York Times, CAF officials have not yet responded to the Moroccan proposal, and it is not clear whether Morocco plans to go further with this proposal. However, many football officials in Africa, including CAF President Ahmed Ahmed, publicly announced their support for the Moroccan bid, which contradicts the guidelines listed in the FIFA letter.
This step was taken by FIFA in order to avoid the mistakes made in the past. Corruption scandals erupted in 2015 when the Swiss police in Zurich arrested seven senior FIFA officials following the request of a US court. The latter accused them of receiving bribes worth $ 150 million since 1990.
40 more former FIFA officials were also arrested at the time, which forced Joseph Blatter, a Swiss football administrator who was the eighth president of FIFA from 1998 to 2015, to resign on the same year.
