FIFA's ethics judge will make final call

For Qatar or Russia to be stripped of the World Cup, a key person in the legal chain needs to make use of the powers available to him.

Events of recent days, however, suggest FIFA's independent ethics judge, Joachim Eckert, will interpret the rules more cautiously and have added to the pessimism of critics who want the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting awards overturned.

Eckert is a middle man in the process - between Michael Garcia, the ethics prosecutor who must provide the evidence, and FIFA president Sepp Blatter, who heads the 27-member executive committee and congress of 209 national associations.

It may fall to Eckert - in the toughness of his verdicts and language of his final report - to raise public pressure on FIFA to take the highest-risk, highest-reward options in a case that will define the reputation of soccer's world governing body.

"That is not our job," Eckert said last Friday, when giving his most detailed insight yet on the investigation. "We will not make any recommendations."

Ever since a 22-man FIFA executive committee chose Russia and Qatar in December 2010, critics have sought reasons to justify change.

Their hope has been sustained by reports and allegations calling into question Qatar's fitness to host the world's favorite sporting event: voting collusion, bribery, rights of slave labor and gay fans, extreme heat and disruption to European club soccer have all been raised as reasons to remove the tournament.

The wait for a definitive independent probe into the contests has been peppered with resignations of FIFA executive committee members implicated in other cases of unethical behavior.

The integrity of FIFA's ruling board has been lacking so often that it added to an impression something must have been wrong when those now-discredited men were power brokers.

Still, Eckert has more authority than he admits to, according to some sports lawyers who talked about the blockbuster case.

Eckert suggested he is limited by FIFA rules to only judge individuals using evidence provided by ethics prosecutor Garcia, the American lawyer leading the investigation.

It is, according to Eckert, for the FIFA executive board or the congress of 209 member associations to decide if the independent ethics committee's work justifies voting again on which country should host the competition.

Not necessarily so, some experienced sports lawyers said.

"What is the point of an ethics commission if it can't take the biggest political decisions?" said one lawyer who has been involved in FIFA cases.

"According to the rules it is possible," said another, suggesting FIFA's ethics committee can take "any kind of decisions".

The lawyers spoke on condition of anonymity because they could potentially be involved in legal cases arising from the Garcia-Eckert probe.

Eckert refused to say if sanctions were likely against some officials involved in the contest, such as voting members of the FIFA board or staffers from the nine bidding candidates from 11 countries.

One lawyer who has worked on past FIFA cases agreed Eckert could only target individuals and not collective bodies, such as an executive committee or bidding team.

"Eckert does not have the powers of a super president to change decisions," the lawyer said.

Asked if Russia or Qatar could lose hosting rights, the lawyer said: "Personally, I doubt that."