Reporters from the Sunday Times have responded to Sepp Blatter's allegations that racism is behind their investigations into the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, calling the FIFA president's comments "deranged."
Last June, Blatter hit out at critics who he said want to destroy football's governing body and blasted reports surrounding Qatar's 2022 bid as being tied to racism.
"There is a sort of storm against FIFA relating to the Qatar World Cup," Blatter said. "Sadly there's a great deal of discrimination and racism."
On Wednesday, Sunday Times reporters Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake discussed their initial reactions to Blatter's comments on "The Media Show" on BBC Radio 4.
Blake said, "That was an absolutely extraordinary moment because I mean foolishly we had actually sort of expected that FIFA would take this volume of evidence reasonably seriously, but they completely stonewalled us and just refused to say anything.
"And then when Blatter did finally stand up and we thought, 'Oh great, he's going to respond,' he just called us racist, and that was basically the sum total of their reaction.
"He just had all the appearance of a sort of dictator clinging to power, to be honest. It was a kind of deranged speech."
The Sunday Times reported last summer of corrupt payments by Qatar's Mohamed bin Hammam, alleging the former Asian football leader paid millions of dollars to Asian and African officials, buying influence for Qatar's 2022 World Cup campaign and his own FIFA presidential challenge to Blatter in 2011.
"We'll both continue to work on this story for some time to come," Calvert said. "There is a lot more to do on it. We've got Sepp Blatter, who's going to be re-elected in May, and as long as he's there, [there's more to do]."
For their reporting, Calvert and Blake were recently named joint winners of the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism.