Sepp Blatter, president of football’s world governing body FIFA, yesterday rejected allegations of corruption and accused England of being "bad losers" after the award of the 2018 World Cup to Russia.
England lost out in the race for the 2018 tournament last Thursday after gathering only two of 22 first-preference votes of the FIFA Executive Committee.
Over the weekend acting English Football Association chairman Roger Burden withdrew his application for the permanent post over England's World Cup bid failure, saying "the role entails liaising with FIFA and I want nothing more to do with them."
"To be honest, I was surprised by all the English complaining after the defeat," Blatter told Swiss weekly magazine Weltwoche in an interview published today. "England, of all people, the motherland of fair play ideas.
"Now some of them are showing themselves to be bad losers. You can't come afterwards and say so and so promised to vote for England. The results are known. The outcome came out clearly."
"There is no systematic corruption in FIFA. That is nonsense," he added. "We are financially clean and clear."