FIFA presidential candidate Michael van Praag promised to published the Garcia Report if he is elected to replace incumbent Sepp Blatter in May.
The president of the Dutch Football Federation (KNVB) has just returned from a trip to Paraguay where he tried to gather support from the presidents of the South American federations.
Michael van Praag
“Some people who cooperated in this report have been promised privacy and if you promise privacy to somebody then you also have to make sure that they keep their privacy,” Van Praag told reporters on Friday (March 6)) in Amsterdam about publishing Garcia’s findings.
“So I would make sure that names of people would not be in that report, but yes, one of the first things that I would like to do is to make the Garcia report public, but first to the FIFA members, because they are the members and they are entitled to know at first hand what happened.”
The report was submitted by American investigative lawyer Michael Garcia to examine the selection process to award the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.
Van Praag, the 68-year-old president of Dutch football’s governing body KNVB, is proposing changes including a 40-team World Cup finals tournament, adding one nation from each confederation plus the title holders.
The Dutch candidate – who is competing for FIFA’s top job against Blatter, Portuguese veteran Luis Figo and FIFA vice-president Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan – also said he was in favour of adopting video replays to review more than just goalline controversies in a system that it has been already experimented by the Dutch federation KNVB.
“Yes, I am very much disappointed because I believe that we are now in, we are living in 2015 and in some countries it is already possible that the people in the stadium can see on their smartphones what happened on the pitch, whether it is a penalty or not,” Van Praag said.
“There are many countries where that is not the case, but in five or ten years it will also be the case there. So yes, it is unfair that everybody can see it except the gentleman or a lady who is a referee and who has to decide, so that’s old fashion,” he added.
“So I think that video technology the way KNVB (Dutch Football Federation) is operating it, and we have had two years of very successful tests, is very good idea to do that.
(Ventuno/Reuters)