FA urged to ditch FIFA privileges

THE Football Association should offer to abandon their historic FIFA privileges in return for reform of the world governing body, according to the MP who blew the lid off the latest World Cup bribery scandal.

Damian Collins, who used Parliamentary privilege on Tuesday to state allegations that two FIFA executive members — Cameroon’s Issa Hayatou and Ivory Coast’s Jacques Anouma — had been paid 1.5million US dollars to vote for Qatar 2022, said giving up the privileges would be a price worth paying.

The FA, along with the associations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, have their own FIFA vice-president. They also are the only individual national associations represented on the game’s law-making body, the International FA Board, where they each have a vote along with FIFA who have four votes.