2022 World Cup: Choice Of Qatar Was Big Mistake -Blatter

Former FIFA president Josep Blatter considered that the award of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar “was a big mistake”.

According to Spanish publication, AS, the former FIFA boss under whose regime the 2022 World Cup was awarded turned to blame the former president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy as the person who influenced FIFA members to vote for Qatar.

There is great influence of Qatar in French football as even the PSG is owned by a Qatar business man.

Blatter was reported to have remarked that Nicolas Sarkozy was the one who intervened for the emirate to achieve that competition.

“He was disappointed by the victory of Qatar,” Blatter said in an interview published this Sunday in the online edition of the French daily Le Monde. Blatter, who was forced to resign on June 2, 2015 by a corruption scandal, four days after being re-elected as FIFA president, believes that Sarkozy convinced then-UEFA president Michel Platini to support him.

Qatar and not the United States, as they had agreed up to that point. To this was added that on that occasion two World Cups were attributed to a blow, that of 2018, which fell on Russia – which was also chosen by Spain and Portugal in a joint candidacy – and that of 2022, for which the favourite was the United States. but Qatar finally stayed.

Blatter pointed out that there were many questions about the Qatari World Cup, such as the size of the country or the dates on which the competition should be held, since it is too hot in summer. 

“I thought that so much danger would not jeopardize our agreement in principle to attribute the two World Cups to Russia and the United States,” he said. 

But Sarkozy’s intervention, he added, “changed everything,” according to the former FIFA president, who does not rule out that “money circulated” throughout that operation, without directly accusing anyone. 

“In decisions as important as the attribution of a World Cup it is very possible that the money circulates and that someone puts it in his pocket,” said Blatter, that it considered that the investigation opened by FIFA to detect it was not “sufficiently strict”. 

“Without Sarkozy’s last-minute intervention on Platini, Qatar would never have had the World Cup,” said the former FIFA president, who linked this support to the purchase of PSG by a sovereign wealth fund of the emirate and to “major economic activities between Qatar and France “. 

“It is the first time that a political intervention changes a great decision in football,” he said, while reiterating that “on the social and climatic level it was a great mistake to give the World Cup to Qatar.”