Give Aussies World Cup: Lineker
England football great Gary Lineker says Australia remains the best candidate to host the 2022 World Cup amid fresh bribery allegations against Qatar.
Lineker joined calls for a fresh vote for the right to stage the tournament after Britain's Sunday Times said it had obtained millions of documents relating to alleged payments by Mohamed bin Hammam, a Qatari former FIFA executive committee member.
The report claimed Bin Hammam, also a former Asian Football Confederation president, used slush funds to pay cash to top football officials to win a "groundswell" of support for Qatar's World Cup bid - ahead of rivals the US, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
Qatar's organising committee has "vehemently" denied all allegations of wrong-doing, insisting bin Hammam played no official or unofficial role in the bid.
"We will take whatever steps are necessary to defend the integrity of Qatar's bid and our lawyers are looking into this matter," it said in a statement.
FIFA is already investigating the 2010 vote that awarded the 2022 showpiece to Qatar and the 2018 event to Russia following previous corruption accusations.
A report by chief investigator Michael Garcia, a top US lawyer, is to be finalised this year.
But calls for the World Cup to be stripped from Qatar are growing louder, with both FIFA vice-president Jim Boyce and England's Football Association chairman Greg Dyke voicing their support for a new vote if the allegations can be proven.
Former England striker Lineker, now a broadcaster with the BBC, agreed.
"I think FIFA need another vote. The best candidate for 2022, given 2018 is in Europe was, and still is, Australia," he posted on Twitter.
However Football Federation Australia (FFA) boss David Gallop said it was too early to say whether the latest development would open the door for a fresh bid from Australia.
"It's a bit of a watch-this-space at this stage," Gallop told SEN on Monday.
"We'd obviously have to make a decision if we were to go down that road, but we're not at that stage yet.
"We need to get more information about what's been revealed in the last 48 hours.
"But don't be under any illusion that we haven't been heavily involved in all of this for some time now.
"We've been involved in interviews, production of documents and also following carefully what's been happening away from Australia - so we've got people that have been involved for some time now."
Australia spent $43 million - much of it taxpayers' money - on its bid for the 2022 World Cup and officials were shattered when they received only one vote as Qatar dominated.
