Blatter claims Qatar World Cup a disgrace.

Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter now claims that awarding the World Cup to Qatar was a mistake and that the Middle East kingdom is a bad choice to stage the event.

He also says that, although the decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar happened on his watch, he had little to do with it. He wanted the USA to stage the tournament, and it was the intervention of the head of UEFA at the time, Michel Platini, that swung the votes in favour of Qatar.

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However, whilst much of the rest of the world is focused on factors like Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers, their poor human rights record, and its discrimination against the LGBTQ community as reasons for Qatar’s unsuitability, these do not appear to be of concern to the Swiss businessman, who is now 86 years old.

Instead, he believes that Qatar is just too small to stage such a global competition.

According to Blatter’s version of events, Platini bowed to political pressure from the French president at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy, who was trying to persuade the Qataris to buy the Ligue 1 side, PSG. Platini had originally intended to back the USA as hosts, but changed his mind after meeting Sarkozy.

Platini has always denied this maintaining that he acted in the best interest of football, and Sarkozy has never publicly spoken about this matter.

Blatter and Platini, although rivals for the same job, once had a relationship that was described as akin to father and son.

All of that started to change, though, when Blatter agreed in 2011 to give Platini an undocumented loyalty payment of 2 million Swiss francs. This was part of a gentleman’s agreement between Blatter and Platini.

This got the attention of Swiss prosecutors, who started legal action against the two. This led to a fraud trial earlier this year. Although both men were acquitted, that is not the end of the matter because the verdicts are being appealed by the Swiss authorities.

In any case, even before they found themselves standing in the dock together, the relationship between the two men, once regarded as the most powerful in football, had long soured, and they even refused to stay in the same hotel together during the trial.

Blatter has been linked to the corruption in FIFA ever since he was forced to step down soon after starting his fifth term as president. With help from the FBI and US arrest warrants, Swiss police arrested seven delegates at an FIA congress.

Following that, a number of other officials from the governing body were arrested and indicted on a variety of charges, including money laundering and fraud.

Blatter was banned from all football activities for eight years in 2016, but this was cut to six years when he appealed. Platini was given his own ban for his involvement with the subsequent bribe.

Qatar has always maintained that it is innocent of any wrongdoing when it comes to the awarding of the tournament to them.