Josep Blatter: “Choosing Qatar was a big mistake”

The former president of Josep Blatter FIFA CConsider that attribution to it Qatar 2022 World Cup “was a big mistake” He considered that the former French President NIt was Echolas Sarkozy who intervened in order for the emirate to achieve this competition.

“I was disappointed with Qatar’s victory.” Blatter said in an interview published on Sunday in the digital edition of the French newspaper the scientist.

Blatter, who was forced to resign on June 2, 2015 due to a corruption scandalFour days after he was re-elected as FIFA President, consider that Sarkozy persuaded then UEFA President Michel Platini To support Qatar, not the United States, which they had agreed up to that point.

It was added that on that occasion two World Cups were attributed to a blow, the one in 2018, which fell to Russia – which Spain and Portugal had also chosen in a joint nomination – and the one in 2022, for which he was the favourite. The United States, but Qatar eventually stayed.

Blatter pointed out that there are many questions about the Qatar World Cup, such as the size of the country or the dates in which the competition should be held, when the weather is very hot in the summer.

“I thought that such a big risk would not jeopardize our agreement in principle to award the World Cup twice to Russia and the United States,” he said.

But he added that Sarkozy’s intervention “changed everything”, according to the former FIFA president, who does not rule out that “money circulated” throughout that process, without No one is directly accused.

Blatter said, who considered that the investigation opened by FIFA to reveal this was not “strict enough”.

Said the former FIFA president, who linked this support to the purchase of PSG by the emirate’s sovereign wealth fund and “the main economic activities between Qatar and France”.

“It is the first time that political interference changes a major decision in football,” he said, stressing that “on the social and climatic levels, it was a huge mistake to award the World Cup to Qatar.”