Remarks raise fears for England 2018 hopes

NEWS ROUND-UP:MOHAMED BIN Hammam, one of the most senior figures in world football, has heightened fears that Fifa plans to close ranks around the newspaper investigation that threw the race to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups into chaos, criticising the sting as "unethical".

His comments will increase concerns that a backlash against the Sunday Timesrevelations and a forthcoming BBC Panoramaprogramme could harm England's chances of hosting the 2018 World Cup, despite the newspaper sting catching two executive committee members allegedly offering to sell their votes.

Amos Adamu of Nigeria, Oceania’s representative, Reynald Temarii, and four Fifa officials have been suspended and the ethics committee is investigating claims of collusion between two bidders, believed to be Spain/Portugal and Qatar.

But Bin Hammam called into question the newspaper’s methods.

“Forging identity, fabricating evidence and setting traps are unethical behaviours in my point of view,” said the Asian Football Confederation president, on his personal website. “Is it ethical to use unethical measures to protect the ethic?

“How can we serve justice and look for fairness by not acting justly and fairly? How will we clean dirty laundry by using dirty water?”

Fifa rules forbid collusion between bidders for 2018 and 2022. But Bin Hammam, who has no formal role on the Qatar bid team, but is openly making its case, said last month at the Leaders in Football conference that it “must not be surprising” that bidders were saying to him: “Okay, if you vote for me I will vote for you”.

In his blog post, he drew a distinction between agreements between rival bidders and “corrupted collusion”.

“(Fifa’s) president (Sepp) Blatter said, ‘Out of the nine bidding nations, eight of them have representatives in the executive committee and all of them are friends. How can I ask them not to talk about the World Cup bid?’”

Bin Hammam added: “The World Cup is the largest business of Fifa. Collusion will always have a chance to happen as far as two bids will be decided together, but we all pray that no corrupted collusion will find its way to the bids.”

Elsewhere, Celtic are set to confirm the arrival of the French winger Olivier Kapo on a free transfer.

The former Wigan Athletic player, who has been without a club since leaving the DW Stadium in the summer, will agree a deal to stay at Parkhead until the summer of 2012.

West Ham United’s bid to climb off the foot of the English Premier League table has been dealt a blow with the news that influential midfielder Mark Noble has been ruled out for a month after having surgery to remove his appendix.

And Aston Villa captain Stiliyan Petrov yesterday revealed he expects to be out injured for around three months. Petrov’s prognosis is at the higher end of the timescale set last week by manager Gerard Houllier, who confirmed the midfielder would be sidelined until at least Christmas.

Petrov suffered a partial medial knee ligament tear in last month’s 1-0 league defeat at Sunderland.