England streamline 2018 bid team
Six members of England’s 2018 bid team, including David Gill, Karren Brady and Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe, have stood down following a crisis meeting yesterday.
The members who were removed from the team will form an advisory group that will be led by former Birmingham director Karren Brady.
The changes, that were orchestrated by London Olympic committee leaders Lord Coe and Mill, also saw ex FA chairman Geoff Thompson added to the team.
Geoff Thompson
Thompson’s inclusion was seen as key due to him being the only English member on the 24 man FIFA executive committee who hold the votes for the World Cup hosting process. Nevertheless, he is said to have a frosty relationship with bid chairman Lord Triesman which is why his inclusion has taken so long to occur.
Triesman said: “In our view, these changes reflect a positive development and send a loud message of an absolute determination to bring the World Cup tournament to England. We’ve got to a point where the England 2018 campaign requires focus, determination and where everybody involved has a specific purpose to help us win the bid. The new board will provide focused leadership to the team and will work closely together to maximise England’s message to the world.”
Geoff Thompson, said: “The World Cup bid is a tremendous opportunity for English football and the nation as a whole to showcase its facilities, its hospitality and its overall ability to stage the greatest tournament in the world.”
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Time for the lobbying, the listening, the presenting to begin then.
Forget the squabbles, the disagreements, the past.
Get on with the future.
I think it is an absolute outrage that Milton Keynes should be nominated as one of the proposed hosting cities for the World Cup bid 2018.
Not only did this group of entrepreneurs, with no love for or interest in football, lie through their teeth in order to get approval to move the team I supported for over 20 years to another location some 70 miles away but now they have the audacity to bid for their stadium to host a world cup match. The aggrieved Wimbledon FC fans did not get any support whatsoever when we went it alone and started up a new club AFC Wimbledon in the 9th Division of the Pyramid, which is what Milton Keynes ought to have done and not steal someone else’s football team/club.
Consequently and for the sake of football, integrity and some respect for the long suffering Wimbledon FC fans (now AFC Wimbledon) I would request that the Milton Keynes Stadium is summarily removed from the short list of host cities and replaced with a more deserving one.