THE Football Association deserves some straight answers to a few direct questions over the endorsement by UEFA, Europe's football governing body, of Germany as the one and only European choice to stage the 2006 World Cup Finals.

England aspired to bid for the Finals after the success of Euro 96 last summer, knowing that by 2006 we will have a new showpiece national stadium and several club grounds capable of seating more than 50,000 spectators. Now UEFA are saying that Germany got the European vote in 1994.

We want to know when and where this happened. Who were the British UEFA representatives at the meeting? Was the decision minuted and if so, how did the English FA miss reading it?

And how, 12 years before the event, could UEFA quietly, perhaps subversively, endorse one country's application to stage the World Cup without asking if any others wished to submit bids for consideration?

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