FIFA reject Michael Garcia ethics report appeal

FIFA ethics investigator Michael Garcia has lost his appeal against the findings which cleared Qatar and Russia to host the 2022 and 2018 World Cups.

Garcia last month claimed a statement by ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert on his report into bidding for the World Cups had contained "numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations of the facts and conclusions" and announced he would appeal.

That appeal has now been declared inadmissible by FIFA's appeals committee, who said Eckert's statement was not a legally-binding decision and therefore could not be appealed against.

Eckert's statement said any rule breaches by the bidding countries were "of very limited scope", adding: "In particular, the effects of these occurrences on the bidding process as a whole were far from reaching any threshold that would require returning to the bidding process, let alone reopening it."