Spain and Portugal confident they have eight votes in the bag

Wed, 01 Dec 2010

Zurich - The managing director of the joint Spanish and Portuguese bid for the 2018 World Cup finals Miguel Angel Lopez said Wednesday that he believed they had eight votes already secured.

The FIFA executive will vote on Thursday for the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals, with Spain/Portugal competing against Russia, England and a joint Belgium/Netherlands bid.

Lopez told the German Press Agency dpa that he was confident that their bid had eight votes, but that it would then depend on what the executive members did with their second votes, once their first choice had been eliminated.

He said that he believed that all executive members had already made their minds up. "They have been hearing about the World Cup for one and a half years.

"They meet monthly and I am sure that they spoke about it and have decided."

After the suspension of two executive members who were caught in a sting operation allegedly willing to sell their vote, the 22 remaining members will vote, with the first country achieving an absolute majority of 12 votes gaining the right to host the finals.

Should no country achieve the required 12 votes, the country with the least number of votes shall be eliminated. This will be repeated until such time as one of the bids receives 12 votes.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/356128,confident-eight-votes-bag.html.