German paper to release the Garcia report on the Qatar bid today

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In general, the US was found to have followed the rules (which, some would say, is why they lost). The investigator did say, however...That the US did make a 'tactical' decision to withdraw from the 18 WC race to focus on 22 after it became clear 18 was going to Europe.

The investigator also said the US bid may have made a minor violation when it paid for a ExCo member's hotel while in US for a conference. That conference, btw, was for Bill Clinton's foundation -- Clinton, you may recall, was an honorary chairman of the bid. Still, that was not seen as any significant violation. The report does detail some of the gifts that the US bid gave to FIFA execs during bidding process. None of the gifts were seen as violations, though IMO they are also not terribly creative. Some card cases from Tiffany's, some scarves for the wives of ExCo members. Nice, but a little generic, no? The one guy who did get something personal was Japan's Junji Ogura, who received a "specialty food book." Apparently he's a foodie. The US-bid also gave out iPads to FIFA evaluators which had the bid presentation on it. They "were not aware" if the iPads were returned. So, basically, instead of printing up bid books, they put them on iPads and let the evaluators keep the iPads. Again, small stuff.

A few final things that stuck out to me: US soccer paid a $1 million appearance fee to Argentina to play a friendly in the US. Not bad. The appearance fee for a friendly with Paraguay? A little less. Just $150,000. Also, investigator notes that USA and MEX were discussing playing a friendly with $ going to Haiti relief; game didn't happen. Why?

Lastly, investigator noted that at one point an English company "Franklin Jones" was purporting to be working on behalf of US bid. "Franklin Jones" was said to be promising shady trade-offs for votes, but US bid reported it and disavowed any connection. The investigator concluded there was no evidence of an obvious link. Worth noting: Chuck Blazer did not have a formal role in bid but, obviously, was on ExCo and has had his shadiness shown many times over.

In summary, investigator found no obvious/egregious malfeasance from US bid. Which, I imagine, is not much comfort for them or US fans.

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According to minutes from the Executive Committee
meetings held March 20-21, 2014,

The Secretary General informed the members that FIFA’s
commercial partners did not have any major issues with the
potential rescheduling of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar and
had not asked to renegotiate the current agreements. The TV
partners in the USA and Canada did have some issues, as in the
USA there would be a clash with the American Football season, for
which reason it had been agreed to extend the contract with FOX in
exchange for an undertaking not to act against FIFA should the
2022 World Cup be moved to winter.

The minutes state that the Executive Committee then approved an “extension of
USA English-language media rights agreement with FOX for 2023-2026.”

Secretary General Valcke told the Investigatory Chamber that in exchange
for FOX’s willingness to accept a potential rescheduling of the World Cup, “we
agreed that we will extend with FOX for the same price as what they pay for 2022
plus inflation costs.”As a result, Secretary General Valcke acknowledged, by
rescheduling the World Cup “potentially we are losing money and we are making
less money because we are not running an open process in the U.S. market, giving a
chance to other channels to bid for and we just extend with FOX for the same
amount of money.”Given the percentage of FIFA’s revenue generated by the
World Cup, and the increasing use of those funds for football development—for
example, a projected $900 million for 2015 to 2018, up $100 million from the prior
period—lost revenue may have a direct impact on FIFA’s investment in financial
aid and other commendable “priority” development programs.

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