Apr 23, 2006, 23:41 GMT
Hamburg - The German local organising committee (OK) of the World Cup and football's controlling body, FIFA, seem to be on collision course after the head of the OK, Franz Beckenbauer, described FIFA's intervention with ticket sales as an interference.
In a TV programme to be broadcast on Monday, Beckenbauer also described FIFA's decision to cancel a World Cup opening gala in Berlin as an embarrassment.
'They have taken away our original idea. If Germany had stayed in charge, the opening gala would certainly not have been cancelled,' Beckenbauer said during the programme that was filmed on Friday.
Earlier FIFA and the OK had clashed over FIFA's attempts to prevent Beckenbauer from speaking at the opening ceremony in Munich on June 9 to allow FIFA president Sepp Blatter most of the allocated speaking time.
In the last few World Cup tournaments the president of the organizing committee was allowed to make an address at the opening ceremony.
There was also some disagreement over a diagram for the opening ceremony which the OK had suggested should be called Germany 2006, while FIFA want it to be called FIFA 2006.
There have been numerous clashes between Beckenbauer and Blatter, who would have preferred South Africa to host the 2006 World Cup and Beckenbauer had earlier even threatened to resign over ticket sales.
FIFA said they did not want to comment on the list of planned speakers at the opening ceremony, saying that things had not yet been finalised, while the OK confirmed that discussions had taken place and that they wished both Germany and the OK to be represented during the speeches.
There is also the fear that Blatter could be booed at the opening ceremony if Beckenbauer is not allowed to speak. The FIFA president has previously been booed in Germany.
Beckenbauer said in the television programme that he believed his OK to be the last that still had something to say in the way the World Cup was organised as the controlling body was trying to completely take over the running of things.
'In 2010 South Africa will not have anything to say in their own country,' he said.
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