Australia’s sports minister said Friday that no government should fund another World Cup bid until FIFA had been subject to external scrutiny. Senator Mark Arbib was also critical of FIFA’s bid process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts, a process in which Australia was humiliated when it received just one FIFA vote to host the 2022 tournament won by Qatar. “Seeing what I have seen in terms of the bidding process, and now we hear about collusion between bidding nations, it’s pretty clear it wasn’t a fair playing field,” Arbib told ABC radio. “And I don’t think that any government, knowing what we know, would — without reform of the FIFA organisation, reform of the bidding process — no government would want to put funds into any bidding process. “FIFA need to clean up their game and until they do no government should have confidence in their processes.” Sepp Blatter, 75, was re-elected head of world football on Wednesday after his only rival Asian football chief Mohamed bin Hammam was forced to withdraw amid claims he tried to bribe voters with cash-filled envelopes. After months of explosive corruption allegations, delegates at FIFA’s 61st Congress returned the unopposed Swiss by a landslide of 186 votes out of 203 despite a call for a postponement of the election by England’s Football Association. Australian football’s governing body, the Football Federation Australia (FFA), voted in favour of Blatter’s re-election and indicated it supported reform from within. But the sports minister said an external voice should be heard, in the same way the International Olympic Committee (IOC) did after the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City which were tainted by a votes for bribes scandal. “I think they (FIFA) need to bring in someone from outside the organisation,” Arbib said. “And they need to take action to reform their organisation.” “And certainly the President Sepp Blatter said he would do that yesterday and the football federations around the world need to hold him to account.
