Sepp Blatter says picking Qatar as World Cup host was a ‘mistake’
The HinduPicking Qatar to host the World Cup was a mistake 12 years ago, FIFA’s president at the time Sepp Blatter said Tuesday, again citing a meeting between Nicolas Sarkozy and Michel Platini for swaying key votes. “It’s a country that’s too small,” Blatter said of Qatar, the smallest host by size since the 1954 tournament in Switzerland. It became part of FIFA lore that an expected U.S. victory swung toward Qatar at a meeting Sarkozy hosted in Paris in the week before the Dec. 2, 2010 vote by FIFA’s executive committee. Blatter, who went to Moscow during the 2018 World Cup as a guest of Russia while he and Platini were suspended by FIFA from soccer, told the Swiss newspaper reporters he would watch games in the coming weeks on television at his apartment in Zurich.