Disgraced former Fifa president Sepp Blatter admits giving World Cup to Qatar was a mistake

Asked to justify giving the world’s biggest sporting event to a country smaller than Yorkshire, without any significant footballing heritage or infrastructure and where summer temperatures often reach 50C, the Fifa president put a brave face on it.

“We go to new lands,” Blatter said. “The Middle East and Arabic world has been waiting for a long time. So I’m a happy president when we talk about the development of football.”

Twelve years later, and 12 days before Qatar open the first winter World Cup with a game against Ecuador, we have learned what Blatter, now 86 and a disgraced former president, really thought.

Blatter has admitted that the vote – said by the US Justice Department, among others, to have been corrupt – to give the tournament to the Gulf state was a mistake and linked to an arms deal between Qatar and France.

However, Qatar triumphed in the 2022 vote and Blatter told the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger: “It’s too small a country. Football and the World Cup are too big for this. It was a bad choice and I was responsible for it as Fifa president.” Blatter has long insisted that the key to Qatar’s victory was Uefa’s president Michel Platini switching from supporting the USA to Qatar after pressure from the then French president Nicolas Sarkozy at a lunch with Qatar’s ruler.

Until then, Blatter had been confident of persuading Fifa’s 22-man executive committee to give the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to the other “superpower”, the USA.

“A week before the 2010 Fifa congress, Michel Platini called me to say that our plan would not work,” Blatter added. “It turned out exactly like this: thanks to Platini’s four votes, the World Cup went to Qatar instead of the United States. That is the truth.

“Of course it was also about money. Six months later, Qatar bought fighter jets from the French for dollars 14.6 billion [pounds 12.7 billion].”

Blatter also questioned why his successor, Gianni Infantino, is now living in Qatar, adding: “For me, it is clear: Qatar is a mistake. The choice was bad. What I’m wondering: why is the new Fifa president living in Qatar? He can’t be the head of the local World Cup organisation. That’s not his job. There are two organising committees for this – a local one and one from Fifa.”

Platini has always disputed Blatter’s claim and said in 2020 he had made his decision some time before the lunch with Qatar’s Emir and not due to political pressure from Sarkozy.

Qatar won the 2022 election by 14 votes to the USA’s eight in the final round. Geoff Thompson, who was Britain’s Fifa vice-president at the time, said he was “staggered” when the final outcome was revealed by Blatter.

“I was absolutely staggered,” he told The Times this week. “I was just so, so surprised. We knew when the other bidders were knocked out, but when it came down to the final two we had to wait for Blatter to open the envelope.

“I was very much expecting it to be the USA and I couldn’t believe it when it was Qatar.”

There have been allegations, most recently by the US department of justice, that some of the 22 Fifa members were paid bribes to vote for Qatar. England had bid against Russia for 2018, but were eliminated in the first round with just two votes – Thompson’s and one other.

Qatar’s FA and bidding committee have always denied paying for votes. There have been allegations about Qatar’s Fifa member at the time, Mohamed Bin Hammam, but the Qatar FA told a 2014 investigation by the US attorney Michael Garcia that he held no formal role with the bid committee or organising committee of the World Cup. A statement to Garcia from Qatar said: “Mr Bin Hammam did not consistently support Qatar’s quest to host the Fifa World Cup. At the outset of the process, he argued against the nation submitting a bid, perhaps because it conflicted with his own Fifa presidential ambitions.

“It was only in 2010 that Mr Bin Hammam appeared to support the submission of a bid, but even then he did not advise or work closely with the bid committee. Indeed, until the end, some members of the bid committee were not certain that Mr Bin Hammam planned to vote for the Qatar bid.”

In April 2020, a US justice department indictment stated that three South American Fifa officials – Brazilian Ricardo Teixeira, the late Nicolas Leoz, from Paraguay, and an unnamed co-conspirator believed to be the late Julio Grondona, from Argentina – took bribes to vote for Qatar to host the 2022 tournament.

The indictment also alleged that former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner was paid $5 million through offshore companies to vote for Russia to host the 2018 tournament. The indictment stated: “Ricardo Teixeira, Nicolas Leoz and co-conspirator No 1 were offered and received bribe payments in exchange for their votes in favour of Qatar to host the 2022 World Cup.”

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Warner, who is still fighting extradition to the US from Trinidad, was allegedly paid via ten shell companies based in several offshore countries.

The indictment added: “Several of the accounts used to wire money to Warner received or sent wire transfers to or from companies based in the United States that performed work on behalf of the 2018 Russia World Cup bid.”

Both Qatar and Russia have repeatedly denied paying bribes.

Originally published as Disgraced former Fifa president Sepp Blatter admits giving World Cup to Qatar was a mistake