Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent and Con­ca­caf boss, Jack Warn­er has brushed off the de­ci­sion by the Eng­lish Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion to ab­stain in the vote for the pres­i­den­cy of Fi­fa as be­ing fool­ish. On Thurs­day, the Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion's board de­cid­ed to ab­stain in the vote for the pres­i­den­cy of Fi­fa. Sepp Blat­ter, the cur­rent head of foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body, is be­ing chal­lenged by Qatari Mo­hamed Bin Ham­mam, the pres­i­dent of the Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion. But the FA has cho­sen not to vote af­ter al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion against Fi­fa in re­cent months. The pres­i­den­cy vote will take place on June 1 and in a state­ment, the FA said: "The FA board has to­day [Thurs­day] agreed to ab­stain in the vote of the pres­i­den­cy of Fi­fa.

"There are a well-re­port­ed range of is­sues both re­cent and cur­rent which, in the view of the FA board, make it dif­fi­cult to sup­port ei­ther can­di­date. "The FA val­ues its re­la­tion­ships with its in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners very high­ly. We are de­ter­mined to play an ac­tive and in­flu­en­tial role through our rep­re­sen­ta­tion with­in both Ue­fa and Fi­fa.

"We will con­tin­ue to work hard to bring about any changes we think would ben­e­fit all of in­ter­na­tion­al foot­ball."

Reached for com­ment on the de­ci­sion, Warn­er said the de­ci­sion by the Eng­lish will not af­fect the out­come of the elec­tions. "Fi­fa has more than 200 mem­bers and if the Eng­lish FA choos­es to play the fool let them go right ahead, I am not con­cerned." "Con­ca­caf or Fi­fa can­not and should not be both­ered, stat­ed Warn­er, who was al­leged­ly named in cor­rup­tion claims by for­mer FA chair­man Lord Tries­man and the Sun­day Times last week over the vot­ing for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup rights.

While Eng­land won a mea­gre two votes in its bid to host the 2018 World Cup, Qatar was suc­cess­ful in its bid to stage the 2022 tour­na­ment but its team has been ac­cused of pay­ing bribes to win votes. Fi­fa has launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tions but they have cast a shad­ow over both Blat­ter, 75, and Bin Ham­mam, 62. The lat­ter was an in­flu­en­tial fig­ure in se­cur­ing the 2022 World Cup for his coun­try. Be­fore the FA took its de­ci­sion to ab­stain, Blat­ter had stat­ed: "I think it is a lit­tle bit strange when the num­ber one as­so­ci­a­tion in the world, i.e. the FA, have two can­di­dates in front of them and can­not make a de­ci­sion which one to sup­port."

Blat­ter, who is aim­ing for a fourth term as Fi­fa pres­i­dent, al­so stat­ed that Fi­fa is to in­ter­view a whistle­blow­er con­cern­ing the al­le­ga­tions made about the Qatar bid.

Asked if Con­ca­caf had de­cid­ed on who it will vote for at the June 1 elec­tions at Fi­fa's head­quar­ters in Zurich, Switzer­land, Warn­er said, "We still have not de­cid­ed on who will be back­ing and all shall be known short­ly in Zurich.