The former president of Fifa reaffirmed that the choice to entrust the organization of the Football World Cup was decided in 2010 on a reversal of European votes to the detriment of the United States.
Twelve years after the award, and twelve days before the opening of the competition, Sepp Blatter comes out of the woods. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar is “a mistake”, according to the former president of the International Federation (Fifa) at the time of the vote. “For me, the country was too small, it is as big as a canton here in Switzerland. The first problem that then appeared was the climate,” said Sepp Blatter.
Fifa had decided to award the 2018 and 2022 editions of the World Cup on the same day, December 2, 2010, “to try to ally Russia and the United States”, candidates for their organization, recalls the former president of the body from 1998 to 2015, now 86 years old. “There was a consensus within the executive committee of Fifa.”
A consensus which was however broken a week before the vote, explains Blatter in an interview with the German agency SID. He claims that during a lunch at the Elysée Palace with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Qatar’s Crown Prince Tamim bin Hamad al Thani – who will become Emir in 2013 – the French President “recommended” Platini to vote for Qatar.
A version of the facts denied by Michel Platini: “President [Sarkozy] never asked me to vote for anyone, but I understood [lors du déjeuner] that he supported Qatar,” he told French investigators.
Blatter to compensate workers
If Russia won the organization of the 2018 World Cup, Qatar won the 2022 World Cup, by 14 votes against 8 in favor of the United States. A choice that Blatter had already called“mistake” in 2014, a year before having to leave office amid scandals at Fifa.
“The quintessence was that I could no longer count on the four votes of Europe for the United States”, argues today the former boss of world football. “If the four votes had gone for the United States, the United States would have won the World Cup, not Qatar. It’s the truth, I won’t back down.”
Qatar is the object of numerous criticisms from NGOs on respect for human rights, in particular those of foreign workers. In a report published in May, Amnesty International called on Fifa to set up a €420 million fund to provide reparations to the hundreds of thousands of migrant workers who suffered human rights violations in the emirate.
Sepp Blatter says he is in favor of such a fund, while the Qatari Minister of Labor refuses. “It is naturally the obligation of Fifa to be part of it”, believes Blatter, who claims “a fund of the order of magnitude of the premiums paid to the 32 participants, or even double that”.