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LONDON. — The Duke of Cambridge and David Cameron have become embroiled in a row over corruption in football as the full extent of England’s failed attempt to stage the 2018 World Cup was made public.

The former prime minister and Prince William were at a meeting during which a vote-swapping deal between England and South Korea was discussed, according to an official report released on Tuesday night.

The long-awaited FIFA report has disclosed the lengths to which England’s football bosses went to court FIFA executives, many of them now discredited, as they sought to secure votes for England’s 2018 bid.

At one point officials discussed the possibility of arranging a meeting with the Queen for one FIFA representative whose vote could have helped England.

The FIFA report reveals how Cameron asked the South Korean delegation to back England’s bid, only to be told that England would have to agree to reciprocate by pledging support for South Korea’s bid to host the 2022 tournament.

Such a vote-swapping deal, the report concluded, would have been in “violation of the anti-collusion rules”. The report, written in 2014 by FIFA’s then chief ethics investigator Michael Garcia and which was leaked to a German newspaper this week, details how England bid officials interacted with FIFA officials in the run up to the vote.

It discloses how they were asked to bestow an honorary knighthood and arrange an audience with the Queen for one South American official. England 2018 officials arranged work at Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur football clubs for the “adopted son” of one official.

They even considered a request by the same official, the Trinidad and Tobago FIFA vice-president Jack Warner, to have his hometown twinned with an “English village” according to the report.

The FA offered Burton upon Trent, the Staffordshire home of its national football centre, as a potential twin town. The report discloses how Cameron met FIFA vice-president Mong-Joon Chung of South Korea in Prince William’s suite at the Baur au lac Hotel in Zurich on the eve of the vote in December 2010.

South Korea was bidding to stage the 2022 World Cup which was also being decided at the same time. “The Prime Minister asked Mr Chung to vote for England’s bid, and Mr Chung responded that he would if Mr (Geoff) Thompson (chairman of England’s bid) voted for Korea,” states the report based on evidence provided by the English delegation.

The Queen is also named in the report after it emerged that FA chiefs met with a senior FIFA official in 2009 who asked for an audience with the monarch.

It is alleged that Nicolas Leoz, president of the South American Football Confederation, suggested the possibility of an honorary knighthood.

In the meeting with Lord Triesman, the then FA chairman, it is alleged that Dr Leoz said, “that he believed that a knighthood from the United Kingdom would be appropriate”.

Andy Anson, chief executive of England 2018, the company behind the English FA bid, told investigators he recalled officials “said to me that it would be nice if at some point Dr Leoz would get to meet the Queen.”

England 2018 officials, recognising the difficulty of arranging an honorary knighthood, instead discussed “creating a FA Disability Cup” that “could be named after him”.

Subsequently officials questioned whether naming a trophy in his honour was “big enough” inducement to gain Dr Leoz’s support. — The Daily Telegraph.