Soccer-England looking alone in World Cup boycott call

By Mitch Phillips LONDON, June 1 (Reuters) - England was looking increasingly isolated in its call for a boycott of soccer's World Cup on Monday as a senior UEFA official cast doubt on the idea and the rest of Europe remained near-silent. Following Sepp Blatter's re-election as FIFA president last week, the English Football Association's chairman Greg Dyke said his organisation would support any boycott led by the UEFA, the sport's European federation. However, Dyke stressed England would not stay away from the world's most popular sporting event unilaterally, and the UEFA official said he preferred a different approach to handling the corruption scandal at the global governing body. Requesting anonymity, the official cited the decision of newly-elected FIFA vice-president David Gill to quit almost immediately in protest at Blatter's re-appointment. "The Brits think (a boycott) is the next step, but others - we saw it with what David Gill did - believe the best solution is to withdraw from FIFA," he told Reuters. "It is more logical than a boycott because you boycott this one, the next one, but then what?" Britain has been one of Blatter's fiercest critics since England lost a bid to host the 2018 World Cup. It has stepped up the attacks since U.S. authorities charged nine soccer officials with corruption and Swiss prosecutors announced a criminal investigation into FIFA votes to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively. It remained unclear how much pressure UEFA could exert for change at FIFA or whether its members could field teams at the World Cup if it separated from the global body. In England - the country that invented the game but has hosted its premier event just once, in 1966, when it also won for the only time - Dyke's comments have drawn support. The British government minister responsible for sport said all options including a boycott should be considered, while Gill's decision received Royal approval from Prince William, who fronted the failed 2018 bid. But while British newspapers and TV bulletins continued to run FIFA-related articles prominently and talk of a potential boycott, the rest of Europe appeared to have moved on. The French Open tennis tournament was the big sports news in France, despite the country's two most powerful soccer officials sitting in opposite camps on the FIFA debate. While Platini, a fierce critic of Blatter, has led calls for Europe to go its own way, the head of the French federation Noel Le Graet voted for the 79-year-old Swiss for a fifth term, partly because of his country's good relations with FIFA since being granted the 2019 women's World Cup. "That is exactly the kind of problem that put FIFA to the state it is in right now," the official said. "It is pure vote-catching: 'Blatter gives me the women's World Cup, I vote for him'." UEFA is holding the emergency meeting on Saturday before the European Champions League final in Berlin, with its response to Blatter's re-election the only item on the agenda. Few European nations have made any official comment on supporting a boycott. The head of the Swedish FA Karl-Erik Nilsson told Reuters that boycotts were not normally the Swedish way, though he did say that nothing could be ruled out in "special and extreme circumstances." "We will lick our wounds and come back with some smart suggestions and ideas to consider," he said. Even England's British neighbour Northern Ireland sounded cautious on the boycott idea. "It's a bit early to consider nuclear options like that," the Irish FA's chief executive Patrick Nelson told the BBC. Blatter himself appears convinced that England's approach, and the arrests made by the U.S. FBI in Zurich last week, are not unrelated to failed bids to host the tournament. "There are signs that cannot be ignored," he said after his re-election. "The Americans were candidates for the World Cup of 2022 and they lost. The English were the candidates for 2018 and they lost, so it was really the English media and the American movement." England's bid was a disaster as, despite earning rave reviews for the technical aspects, it won only two votes of the 22 then available. The bid team subsequently complained about corruption in the process, only to be written off by Blatter as "bad losers." (Additonal reporting by Julien Pretot, editing by David Stamp)