The man in charge of monitoring ethics of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting candidates has been banned from soccer for the next 7 years for unspecified ethics violations.
Harold Mayne-Nicholls, the former president of Chile’s football federation, is not allowed to comment on the story, but he was “chosen by FIFA to inspect 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting candidates.”
[ MORE: Steve Nash registered by 4th division side ]
And it seems he was very leery of both Qatar and Russia as hosts before he lost his job.
Mayne-Nicholls was appointed by FIFA in 2010 to lead a six-member team evaluating the 2018-2022 World Cup bidders. All nine candidates were visited between July and September 2010.
In the technical report, Mayne-Nicholls flagged eventual winners Russia and Qatar as presenting the most risk to FIFA as potential host nations.
The FIFA executive committee largely ignored his report, and a FIFA-commissioned analysis of the commercial prospects for each bidder’s World Cup project, in a December 2010 vote.
Mayne-Nicholls was voted out of office in Chile soon after completing his task for FIFA.
Surely it’s more complicated than Mayne-Nicholls saying, “These guys could be a problem” and FIFA saying, “No, they won’t be. You’re out,” but is the organization going to ever do anything without us waiting for the details.
Like the heavily-redacted Garcia report, you can’t help but think we won’t have details until we’re watching the court cases and trials of the arraigned.