BRIDGETOWN–A British news­pa­per, the In­de­pen­dent, yes­ter­day launched a caus­tic at­tack on Fi­fa's high-rank­ing T&T ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Jack Warn­er af­ter foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body re­ject­ed Eng­land's bid to host the 2018 World Cup. Sam Wal­lace, the news­pa­per's foot­ball cor­re­spon­dent, ac­cused Warn­er of promis­ing Eng­land the all-im­por­tant three Con­ca­caf votes and then fail­ing to de­liv­er dur­ing the se­cret bal­lot in Zurich. Warn­er, a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in T&T, is a pow­er­ful Fi­fa vice-pres­i­dent and is pres­i­dent of Con­ca­caf, the con­ti­nen­tal gov­ern­ing body for the North, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion. His vote was one of 22 on the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee which helped hand Rus­sia the 2018 show­piece and sur­pris­ing­ly award oil-rich Qatar the 2022 event. In re­cent weeks, Warn­er had been court­ed by Eng­land Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron; Prince William, the sec­ond in line to the British throne and su­per­star David Beck­ham, the most recog­nis­able foot­ball face in the coun­try.

How­ev­er, Eng­land em­bar­rass­ing­ly bowed out in the first round of vot­ing on Thurs­day se­cur­ing just two votes, one of which is be­lieved to be the coun­try's bid chair­man Ge­off Thomp­son. Wal­lace con­tend­ed that Eng­land's bid com­mit­tee should have been wary of en­gag­ing Warn­er, es­pe­cial­ly "giv­en his im­pli­ca­tion in a 2006 World Cup tick­et scan­dal over which even Fi­fa was moved to sanc­tion him." "But the Eng­lish bid team thought that they could tame Warn­er and per­suade him to de­liv­er the three Con­ca­caf votes. By last night they were com­ing to terms with the scope of their po­lit­i­cal mis­cal­cu­la­tion," Wal­lace wrote. "Eng­land chased Warn­er all over the world, send­ing Fabio Capel­lo's Eng­land team to play T&T in June 2008 in what turned in­to a ral­ly for Warn­er the politi­cian." He con­tin­ued: "They dis­patched Beck­ham to hold a train­ing camp there and the FA's top brass con­sent­ed to be lec­tured and ha­rangued by Warn­er, a man from an is­land with vir­tu­al­ly no foot­ball his­to­ry, in re­turn for him com­ing through for them at Fi­fa House yes­ter­day.

"It will long be re­gard­ed as a source of great em­bar­rass­ment that Eng­lish foot­ball ever took (Warn­er) se­ri­ous­ly but the hu­mil­i­a­tion he vis­it­ed on them will nev­er be for­got­ten." That Eng­land fal­tered in the first round came as a huge shock es­pe­cial­ly since their bid was re­cent­ly rat­ed as the strongest by Fi­fa's tech­ni­cal in­spec­tion team. And while Warn­er had nev­er open­ly pledged his sup­port for Eng­land, his meet­ings with the dis­tin­guished mem­bers of the bid del­e­ga­tion had raised hopes he would side with them dur­ing Fri­day's vote. He was in­vit­ed to lunch by Cameron late last month and it was re­port­ed that he met with Prince William and Beck­ham dur­ing the last week. On­ly re­cent­ly, he de­scribed the Eng­land bid "im­pres­sive" but ac­knowl­edged that there were very strong pro­pos­als from Rus­sia, Spain-Por­tu­gal and the Nether­lands-Bel­gium. "I am still un­de­cid­ed as to whom we will sup­port, but the Con­ca­caf fam­i­ly will vote to­geth­er," Warn­er was quot­ed as say­ing ear­li­er this week.

Wal­lace said with Fi­fa's re­jec­tion of the Eng­lish bid, Warn­er had giv­en Prime Min­is­ter Cameron the ul­ti­mate snub. "Warn­er de­liv­ered a les­son to Britain's young Prime Min­is­ter and its even fresh­er-faced heir to the throne that there are no pol­i­tics in in­ter­na­tion­al sport more bru­tal than those of Fi­fa..." he wrote. "Cameron was for­tu­nate that he was out of Zurich and away from the tele­vi­sion cam­eras when Warn­er de­liv­ered his stitch-up of the Eng­lish bid in which nei­ther he nor his Con­ca­caf col­leagues... vot­ed for Eng­land. "In Cameron's gild­ed po­lit­i­cal ca­reer it would be dif­fi­cult to re­mem­ber a more bla­tant hu­mil­i­a­tion than the one dealt him by Warn­er." Eng­land's two-year cam­paign to host a World Cup 52 years af­ter they host­ed their last, cost an es­ti­mat­ed �15 mil­lion ster­ling. (CMC)