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Australian football chief says 2022 Qatar process not clean

The chairman of Football Federation Australia says bidding for the 2022 World Cup awarded to Qatar was not clean, explaining in an extraordinary open letter Wednesday how he felt Australia never had a chance to be given hosting rights.

The day after FIFA President Sepp Blatter announced he was resigning his post and would call a new election within nine months, FFA chairman Frank Lowy said ''world football might just be at the dawn of a new era.''

Lowy said that since December 2010, when Australia received just one vote in its World Cup bid for 2022, ''I have nursed a bitter grievance .