Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter reiterated today, less than two weeks before the start of the World Cup in Qatar, that the 2010 election of that country as the venue, when he led the governing organization of global football, was a "mistake", of the which blamed the then president of UEFA, Michel Platini.
"Thanks to the four votes of Platini and his team, the World Cup went to Qatar instead of the United States, that's the truth," he said in an extensive interview published today by the Tribune de Genève newspaper, where he indicated that the Persian Gulf emirate "is too small a country, for which the World Cup is too big".
As he revealed last year in another interview, on that occasion to the French newspaper Le Monde, it was the then president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, who pressured Platini so that UEFA's votes would go to Qatar, after the head of the Eliseo met with the Qatari crown prince.
"Six months later, Qatar bought combat aircraft from France worth 14.6 million dollars, it was of course a matter of money," Blatter said today.
The former FIFA president, suspended from his post in 2015 due to corruption allegations, added that within the organization, before the double election of venues for 2018 and 2022, "the consensus was that Russia would obtain the first of those Cups of the World (as it was) and the second the USA" (other candidates were Japan, Australia and South Korea, as well as Qatar).
"It would have been a gesture of peace, that the two political adversaries for so long organized the World Cup in a row," Blatter said in the interview, where he did not regret that Russia hosted the World Cup in 2018: "They were good organizers," he said.
In the interview, Blatter acknowledged his bad relationship with the current FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, whom he said he did not understand "that he currently lives in Qatar", which makes preparations for the World Cup even more difficult: "It cannot be at the same time the local director of the organization," he said, adding that the Italian-Swiss disrespects him and "avoids" him.
Despite his criticism of Qatar 2022, Blatter expressed his satisfaction with the fact that, "with some exceptions", there have been no boycotts of soccer players at the World Cup in the Arab country, and assured: "With the first whistle of the referee, we no longer We will talk about all these problems, only about sport".
Asked about his recent acquittal - along with Platini - in the corruption process that cost him his job, Blatter said in the interview "relieved" after a process "in which I always knew I was innocent." Despite the acquittal, announced by the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in July, the process against the two former soccer leaders continues, since the Prosecutor's Office appealed the sentence.
