The six-man team touched down in Australia, who has put its hand up to host the 2022 tournament, as part of a whirlwind two-month tour to check out the facilities of the countries bidding for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups.
The team is led by Chilean Football Federation president Harold Mayne-Nicholls and also includes South Africa 2010 chief executive Danny Jordan.
The other members are all representatives from FIFA – head of event management Juergen Mueller, head of marketing David Fowler, World Cup office coordinator Julio Avellar and senior communications advisor Wolfgang Eichler.
Their Australian trip included an inspection of stadiums (Stadium Australia, Brisbane Stadium, Melbourne Cricket Ground and Gold Coast Stadium), hotels, convention centres and other infrastructure in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
The delegation attended a dinner on Tuesday at the Australian Prime Minister’s Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, as guests of Prime Minister Julie Gillard and the heads of all of the country’s states and territories.
“We all agree that the programme was organised in a very professional manner,” Mayne-Nicholls says. “Australia seems to be prepared in all aspects to organise the World Cup in 2022.”
Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy praised the inspectors on their diligence and commitment to detail.
“I would like to thank head of delegation Harold Mayne-Nicholls and his inspectors for coming to our country and doing such a thorough job in inspecting our stadiums and infrastructure,” he says.
“We hope we impressed them with our ability to be able to put on a FIFA World Cup if given the opportunity. They saw a lot during their visit and they had plenty of questions which we were only too happy to answer.”
Australia is a founder member of OFC but switched to the Asian Football Confederation in 2006. It was originally bidding for either the 2018 or 2022 tournaments but it now focusing solely on 2022.
Fellow Asian countries Japan, South Korea and Qatar are also bidding only for 2022. If a European country wins the bid for 2018, the continent will be excluded from the 2022 race.
The next stop for the FIFA inspection delegation will be Belgium and the Netherlands, who are putting in a joint bid, from August 9 to 12.
The worldwide tour will finish with visits to the United States and Qatar in September.
The team will then produce evaluation reports for each bid that will be used to help the FIFA executives decide who to choose for 2018 and 2022 at their meeting in Zurich on December 2.