The Sunday Times and the BBC’s separate reports on corruption involving FIFA had been labelled racist and wrecked England's bid to host the World Cup, he said.
“What I can say is that the reports definitely had an impact on the England bid. There's no mistake about that,” Kyodo news agency quoted Ogura as saying.
“The idea of suing the paper at the executive committee meeting was even brought up,” he added. “The people being accused were from Africa and Oceania, not Europe or Asia, and some felt racism was behind it.”
Two FIFA Executive Committee members alleged to have offered to sell their votes in the bidding process to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Nigerian Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii of Tahiti, were banned and fined by world football’s governing body ahead of the vote.
England lost out in the race for the 2018 tournament on Thursday after gathering only two of 22 first-preference votes.
