South Africa colluded with World Cup rivals – Jordaan 05/11/2010 |
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South Africa 2010 chief Danny Jordaan has admitted to collusion with competitors when he led the country’s World Cup bid team.
Jordaan, who was part of the Fifa 2018/2022 World Cup inspection team following this summer’s tournament, revealed he unsuccessfully tried to persuade England to withdraw from the 2006 race by offering Nelson Mandela's support for 2010.
South Africa persuaded Brazil to pull out of the vote but England stayed in the contest with South Africa, and the 2006 tournament went to Germany. Jordaan went on to secure the 2010 World Cup for South Africa.
The revelations about insider deals a decade ago come as Fifa's ethics committee investigates claims that 2018 contender Spain-Portugal and 2022 candidate Qatar have broken rules by colluding to swap votes.
Jordaan said this week that he wanted Brazil and England out of the 2006 vote to give South Africa a "stronger chance" of winning.
"In the end, we wanted a straight fight so we sent an emissary to the English bid but the English believed they were going to win 2006," Jordaan told the International Sports Event Management conference in London.
He recalled that the England bid was told: "If you withdraw, we will get Nelson Mandela to come to London, to praise you and say nice things about you, and then in 2010 you will be stronger because then you will have dealt with the difficulty of the debate of 1966-2006. But of course we didn't convince them."
Jordaan claimed such deals would be harder now because bidding nations have lucrative contracts with commercial partners that would prevent a late withdrawal. "You can't halfway through decide you aren't running the race," he added. "It's not good or bad. It's the reality – when you bid, you work within the framework of the reality of the rules."
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