Choosing Qatar as World Cup host was a mistake, says Blatter, former FIFA president

The choice of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup “a mistake”, former FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on Tuesday (8), in an interview with the German news agency SID.

“From my point of view, awarding the World Cup to Qatar was simply a mistake. For me, it’s a very small country, it’s as big as a canton here in Switzerland. The first problem that appeared was the weather”, said the former player. 86-year-old manager.

FIFA awarded the organization of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups on December 2, 2010, “to try to associate them with Russia and the United States”, recalls him, who was president of the entity from 1998 to 2015.

“There was consensus within the FIFA executive committee,” he added.

But that consensus fell apart a week before the vote, Blatter explained in the interview. He assures that the former president of France Nicolas Sarkozy advised Michel Platini, then president of Uefa, to vote for Qatar as the host. The matter was reportedly discussed during a luncheon between the two and the Crown Prince of Qatar, Tamim ben Hamad al Thani, who became emir in 2013.

Later, this version of events was denied by Platini.

“The president never asked me to vote for anything in particular, but I thought I understood (during that lunch) that he supported Qatar,” explained the former UEFA president.

“The quintessence was that I could no longer count on Europe’s four votes in favor of the United States. If those votes had gone to the United States, they would have won the World Cup, not Qatar. That’s the truth, no I’ll give my arm to twist”, insisted Platini.

Favorable for workers’ compensation

While Russia achieved its goal of hosting the 2018 edition, Qatar surprised by overcoming the US candidacy by 14 votes to eight.

The Arab country has been the target of numerous criticisms from social organizations, the press and even European governments regarding the rights of foreigners who came to the country to work on building infrastructure for the World Cup.

In a statement published in May, Amnesty International called on FIFA to create a €420 million compensation fund for the hundreds of thousands of workers whose rights have been violated during this period.

Blatter was in favor of the creation of this fund, an initiative rejected by the Minister of Labor of Qatar, Ali bin Samikh Al Marri.