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		</div><p>The Football Association is to consult its lawyers after suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter&#8217;s stunning disclosure that there was an agreement fixed for the 2018 World Cup to go to Russia even before the vote took place.</p>
<p>The FA spent £21m on England&#8217;s 2018 failed bid including £2.5m in public money from local authorities, and its chairman Greg Dyke told MPs it would be &#8220;very nice&#8221; to get that money back.</p>
<p>Spain/Portugal and Belgium/Holland also spent significant sums on bidding.</p>
<p>Blatter told Russian news agency TASS that the tournament was always lined up to go to Russia with the 2022 World Cup to be held in the USA &#8211; until Michel Platini decided to throw his weight behind Qatar.</p>
<p>Australia, Japan and South Korea almost spent tens of million of pounds on bidding for 2022.</p>
<p>Dyke, giving evidence to the culture, media and sport committee, said: &#8220;We will look into detail at what Mr Blatter says.</p>
<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s nothing Mr Blatter says that surprises me much. If he is saying &#8216;we wanted Russia&#8217; and it looks like he wanted that fixed before the vote, it&#8217;s suggesting that it was all fixed anyway.&#8221;</p>
<p>https://youtu.be/6SORs3UGlq0</p>
<p>Blatter told TASS: &#8220;In 2010 we had a discussion of the World Cup and then we went to a double decision.</p>
<p>&#8220;For the World Cups it was agreed that we go to Russia because it&#8217;s never been in Russia, eastern Europe, and for 2022 we go back to America.</p>
<p>&#8220;And so we will have the World Cup in the two biggest political powers.</p>
<p>&#8220;And everything was good until the moment when [French president Nicolas] Sarkozy came in a meeting with the crown prince of Qatar, who is now the ruler of Qatar.</p>
<p>&#8220;And at a lunch afterwards with Mr Platini he said it would be good to go to Qatar. And this has changed all pattern.&#8221;</p>
<p>Blatter, who is facing criminal proceedings in relation to a £1.3m payment made to Platini in 2011 and over TV rights deals sold to Jack Warner, said there was &#8220;no possibility&#8221; that Russia would lose the World Cup.</p>
<p>Dyke was also quizzed by MPs over the FA&#8217;s backing for Platini before the Frenchman was provisionally banned pending an ethics committee hearing into the £1.3m payment for work carried out at least nine years previously.</p>
<p>The FA chairman explained why that support had been suspended, saying: &#8220;That there was no contract, or a verbal contract 10 years later seems to me unrealistic.</p>
<p>&#8220;We were told initially there was a contract, we then discovered at that UEFA meeting there was no [written] contract.&#8221;</p>
<p>Platini has defended himself over the payment in several interviews given to European newspapers.</p>
<p>He told The Daily Telegrpah: &#8220;Is an oral contract legal in Switzerland? Yes.</p>
<p>&#8220;Did I have the right to reclaim my money even nine years later? Yes.</p>
<p>&#8220;Did I produce a proper invoice as FIFA required? Yes.</p>
<p>&#8220;Was the money declared to the taxman? Yes.</p>
<p>&#8220;FIFA had the right, after five years, not to pay me. But they decided to respect what was a perfectly valid arrangement.&#8221;</p>
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