Downing Street Says

» Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Football

Asked what the PM had said in the clip re his meeting with Sepp Blatter, the Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) said that he had had a very constructive meeting; we were hopeful that the FIFA Committee would allow European countries to bid for the 2018 World Cup. He also said, as he had said before, that if the Football Association were to put forward a bid for the 2018 World Cup, he would like to see the tournament come back to England.

Asked why European countries were not able to bid for the World Cup, the PMS said that the question was whether or not European countries were allowed to bid for the 2018 World Cup given the rotation system that applied; that was a decision which FIFA had not made yet, but if they were to open it up to European countries and the FA decided to bid then that would be something that the Prime Minister would very much support.

Asked if we were losing the argument with FIFA that European countries should be able to bid, the PMS said that we should wait and see; the Prime Minister was hopeful that the FIFA Committee would allow European countries to make a bid for the 2018 World Cup but that was a decision they had to make on their timescale.

Asked when the FA would make a decision, the PMS said that it was a matter for them but that they hoped to clear up the situation relatively soon.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.