The case of Jennings v Blatter and others

England 2018 team statement "We stand by our previous position that the BBC's Panorama did nothing more than rake over a series of historical allegations none of which are relevant to the current bidding process. It should be seen as an embarrassment to the BBC."

BBC statement "The programme is in the public interest and shows that some Fifa executives involved in making decisions about the 2018 bid have a history of taking bribes - and that Fifa has consistently failed to act.  Delay until after the bid was not an option once it became clear that the winning nations might have been chosen by officials with a proven track record of corruption."

So -  history or revelation ?  The key element of Andrew Jennings' Panorama was a spreadsheet listing payments from ISL, a Swiss sports marketing company, to various names - some clearly FIFA exectuves, others probably, if the codes were right - during the 90s, when ISL won rights from FIFA year after year.  The allegation is that ISL won the contract because they bunged key FIFA representatives.  In the film Andrew said he received the document a matter of weeks ago. Some of the film couldn't have been made without the document - but much might have been already in the can.  News that Panorama had commissioned Jennings to "do" FIFA again first surfaced in August. Was it always going to be based on this "key" document  - or did Andrew just get lucky ?  The question is important, because the argument is clearly about timing.  England 2018 could not possibly pull out of the bid, yet Jennings (and David Mellor) were pushing the viewer to say withdrawal ought to be contemplated until FIFA is cleaned up - positions they have held way before the spreadsheet in the brown envelope emerged.