Football
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FIFA agrees to publish Michael Garcia report on 2018, 2022 World Cup bids

FIFA's executive committee has agreed unanimously to publish Michael Garcia's report into World Cup bidding, where legally possible.

Officials at a meeting in Morocco agreed to the proposal without a vote being taken -- but nothing will be published until the ethics committee charges against three FIFA ExCo members have been dealt with.

At that same meeting, FIFA president Sepp Blatter also confirmed that FIFA will not reopen the vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce told Press Association Sport: "I am pleased the FIFA executive committee decided without a vote to publish this report. It shows that people at FIFA at the moment do desire transparency and the sooner we can get on with talking about the game of football that we all love, the better."

American lawyer Garcia resigned as FIFA's ethics investigator on Wednesday in protest over the handling of his findings in the 2018 and 2022 World Cup bid process.

Garcia quit a day after the FIFA appeals panel rejected his challenge of German judge and fellow ExCo colleague Hans-Joachim Eckert's summary of the confidential 430-page investigation dossier.

Russia won the right to host the 2018 World Cup, and Qatar was awarded the 2022 tournament.

After Eckert's summary was made public, Garcia claimed the German judge misrepresented his work and then launched his failed appeal.

"[My] report identified serious and wide-ranging issues with the bidding and [World Cup host] selection process," Garcia wrote, adding that Eckert's decision "made me lose confidence in the independence of the Adjudicatory Chamber, [but] it is the lack of leadership on these issues within FIFA that leads me to conclude that my role in this process is at an end."

FIFA president Sepp Blatter said of Garcia's decision: "I'm just surprised. It's all what I can say. Just that."

FIFA rejected complaints earlier in the week from whistleblowers over the conduct of Eckert, who alleged that the EcCo chairman deliberately breached anonymity clauses in a summary of the World Cup bid report.

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