FIFA’S report into World Cup corruption is now pointless and a joke, according to English Football Association chairman Greg Dyke.
He made his comments after the man who investigated claims of wrongdoing said the report was “erroneous”.
“It has undermined the whole process,” Dyke told BBC Sport, adding that it now looked “pretty ugly for FIFA”.
The report cleared Russia and Qatar of corruption allegations but criticised the FA for flouting bid rules.
The 42-page document was put together by German judge Hans-Joachim Eckert and published at 09:00 GMT yesterday.
Less than four hours later, American lawyer Michael Garcia, who spent two years investigating claims of corruption, issued a statement questioning the report.
He said Eckert’s findings contained “numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations”.
Garcia said he intended to appeal to FIFA.
“It’s now pretty ugly for FIFA if the person who did the inquiry says the judge hasn’t properly reflected his inquiry,” added Dyke
“That’s pretty serious for FIFA. It now seems the interpretation of the Garcia report is not a fair one, according to Garcia himself.”
FIFA said it had yet to be notified by Garcia of his intention to appeal.
The FA was accused of trying to “curry favour” with former FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, who quit in 2011 amid bribery allegations.
The report said England’s bid team tried to win the support of Warner, who is from Trinidad and Tobago, by:
Trying to help “a person of interest to him” find a part-time job in the United Kingdom;
Letting the Trinidad and Tobago Under-20 squad hold a training camp in the UK in the summer of 2009;
Sponsoring a gala dinner for the Caribbean Football Union, at a cost of $55 000 (about £35 000)
Dyke said the FA had “nothing to hide”.
“Within that report, most of the criticism is of people who cooperated the most fully,” he said.
“If you actually didn’t cooperate, you don’t get criticised, which seems very weird to me. The FA, I don’t think on this, has got anything to hide
“Everything that was done was cleared with the FIFA executive beforehand and was told to the Garcia report by the English FA.”
Dyke also called for Garcia’s report, which runs into hundreds of pages, to be published in full.
Lord Triesman, who was chairman of the FA at the time voting for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups took place, said he also wants to see the complete document.
He was criticised in the report for failing to cooperate with the investigation.
“I’m never satisfied by seeing summaries by somebody else,” Triesman told BBC Sport. “In this day and age, people are entitled to see the original.”
British MP Damien Collins described Eckert’s report as “a whitewash” before Garcia’s statement was issued.
Fellow MP Clive Efford, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Sport, added: “FIFA has no choice but to publish Michael Garcia’s report in full if it expects anyone to believe their claims that there has been no cover-up over allegations of corruption in the World Cup bidding process.”
FIFA’s inquiry looked at the conduct of the nine teams bidding to win the right to stage the 2018 or 2022 World Cups.
It was initiated after a number of corruption allegations were made once voting had taken place in 2010.
Russia won the right to host the 2018 tournament, beating England as well as joint bids by the Netherlands and Belgium, and Spain and Portugal.
England collected just two votes after expressing high hopes of winning.
To much surprise, Qatar was awarded the 2022 event, edging out Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
Qatar was subsequently accused of paying FIFA officials £3M to secure backing for its bid.
The report cleared the Gulf state of corruption, although it noted that there were “certain indications of potentially problematic conduct of specific individuals”.
In a statement, Qatari officials said: “We cooperated fully with the ethics committee’s investigation and continue to believe that a fair and appropriate review will demonstrate the integrity and quality of our bid.”
The report noted that the Russian bid team made “only a limited amount of documents available for review”.
According to the report, the Russian team hired computers that were subsequently destroyed, denying the inquiry access to email accounts.
“We were always confident that there could be nothing which would come out from this investigation,” said Alexey Sorokin, the head of Russia’s 2018 World Cup organising committee.
(BBC Sport).