Fifa needs to put its house in order

WHILE the current World Cup tournament is giving much joy to the millions of football fans around the world, the same cannot be said for anyone watching the antics of the game's governing body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (Fifa). The world's apex football organisation has been mired in allegations of corruption for years. The latest scandal to surface is about the circumstances behind the secret vote used to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. Everything about that decision seemed odd.

Documents published by Britain's The Sunday Times newspaper recently purported to show bribes paid to secure the 2022 World Cup for Qatar - a small desert nation with little history of the game which proposed to run the tournament during summer when temperatures often hit 50 degrees C.

Amid swirling accusations of impropriety after that controversial decision, Fifa quickly launched an investigation led by an American lawyer, Michael Garcia. Last week, he was quoted as saying that he had prior access to the "vast majority" of the data disclosed by the media. he had also conducted interviews with members of all the bidding teams for the 2018 (which was awarded to Russia) and 2022 World Cups, as well as with members of Fifa's executive committee at the time of the 2010 vote.