English FA chairman Greg Dyke said on Wednesday that if investigations found the awarding of the FIFA 2022 World Cup to Qatar to be corrupt, the bidding process would “have to be re-opened”.

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Blatter reportedly told Russian newspaper TASS this week that a deal had been agreed to award Russia the 2018 World Cup and that a similar agreement had been made for the 2022 competition to be awarded to USA.

However, when the vote came to pass in 2010, Qatar emerged victorious in a highly contentious awarding of the competition.

“There’s nothing that Mr Blatter says that surprises me much really,” Dyke told a Select Committee in London. “I honestly don’t know what it means. If it means…it’s obviously a criticism of Mr Platini because he says Mr Platini swung some votes to vote for Qatar.

“But it basically says ‘We wanted Russia and then we wanted Qatar (sic – Blatter actually said USA)’ and it looks like he wanted that before there was any vote. But I’ve only recently read it.

“First of all, I’d like to read it again and read it in more detail. I’d then like our people to go through it but it does look like it’s suggesting that it was all fixed anyway.”