Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter said that choosing Qatar to host the upcoming World Cup was a “mistake” and a “bad choice.”
“It was a mistake,” Blatter said in an interview with AFP’s German sports subsidiary Sport-Informations-Dienst. “It was based on a decision when I was president, and therefore I bear part of the responsibility for it.”
Blatter blames then-UEFA president Michel Platini for swinging the vote in Qatar’s favor at the behest of then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy had recommended to Platini “that he and his people should vote for Qatar”, Blatter said, while Platini denies the claims.
The former UEFA president told French investigators that while he attended a lunch at the Elysee Palace with Sarkozy and then-Qatari crown prince Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani shortly before the vote, “the president never asked me to vote for one country or another, but I got the impression that he supported Qatar.”
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