Imported User:
A German member of football’s governing body executive committee has hit out at its president Sepp Blatter, after he hinted that the country may have illegally bought the rights to host the World Cup.
The FIFA Executive Committee member Theo Zwanziger baulked at Blatter’s claim that Germany’s successful bid to host the 2006 World Cup finals may have been a result of corruption.
Blatter claimed on Sunday that he thought the voting surrounding Germany’s triumph could have been caught up in scandal when “someone left the room at the last moment”, and was therefore unable to vote. But 67-year-old Zwanziger, who was head of the German Football Association between 2006-2012, has rubbished those claims. “I wasn’t part of the World Cup bid committee at that point,” he told Bild. “But I have no evidence that anything like that happened. Also, I have far too much trust in Franz Beckenbauer, Horst R. Schmidt and Wolfgang Niersbach, who were in charge back then.”
The governing body of world football have been caught up in myriad corruption and bribery scandals, most recently when it revealed that former president Joao Havelange received millions of dollars in illegal payments from marketing firms in the 1990s.
