“We categorically deny this report and consider such allegations untrue and unacceptable,” a government official was quoted as saying by the official Petra news agency.

The Guardian report, which was played up by Aljazeera over the past 24 hours, said that the jamming was “traced to Jordan, which appears to have retaliated angrily after the collapse of a deal that would have allowed football fans there free access to the matches.”

The report said that the paper was in exclusive possession of secret documents tracing “five episodes of jamming definitively to a location near Salt in Jordan, northeast of the capital Amman, confirmed by technical teams using geolocation technology.”

The unidentified Jordanian official acknowledged that negotiations between the Jordanian government and the Qatari satellite channel to get access to the matches carried exclusively by Aljazeera had failed because the network’s offer was unacceptable to Amman and came “too late.”

“However, the Jordanian government kept the outcome of the negotiations secret and continued to deal with Aljazeera bureau in Amman in a professional manner,” he said.