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England could host the football World Cup in 2022, if Qatar’s bid is found to be unethical, UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport John Whittingdale said Thursday.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The decision to hold the 2022 World Cup in Qatar “is obviously something which we [England] are watching,” Whittingdale said in the UK parliament as quoted by the Telegraph.Last week, seven high-ranking FIFA officials were arrested in Switzerland on corruption charges at the request of US authorities. Switzerland has also launched a separate probe into the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments, to be held in Russia and Qatar respectively.
“If FIFA came forward and asked us to consider hosting it [the 2022 World Cup], we do have the facilities in this country and we did mount a very impressive, if unsuccessful, bid to host the 2018 World Cup,” Whittingdale said.
He added that it would be “very unlikely” that another European country would host the tournament in 2022 if Russia hosted the World Cup in 2018.
The corruption scandal contributed, in part, to the resignation of long-time FIFA president Joseph Blatter on Tuesday, just four days after he had beenre-elected for a fifth term.
