Tangled, toxic Garcia report into Russia and Qatar inspires laughs not outrage | Barney Ronay


Investigation into 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids found no smoking gun with the most entertaining revelations being FA’s inept attempt to host the event

Well, that escalated quickly. Midway through Tuesday afternoon Fifa’s sudden decision to publish the whole of the Garcia report into the conduct of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids felt like a momentous, possibly vital moment of outage. Here it was at last, the chance to digest Garcia’s toxic innards; to find, perhaps, the smoking machine gun at the heart of this entire epic saga of human folly and greed.

An hour or so later, as the pages flickered past, Full Garcia already felt like something else, perhaps the great unreadable post-modern football novel we’ve been waiting for all these years, an account so veiled and tangled and semi-anecdotal the instant response is a kind of sickly laughter in the dark.

Related: Michael Garcia’s Fifa report eases Russia and Qatar World Cup fears

Watching the FA 
do Fifa politics is 
like witnessing 
your dad attempt 
to disco dance

Related: Latest Russia allegations raise big questions for Fifa – and football | Sean Ingle

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