Twelve days before the start of the World Cup in Qatar, it is an outing that will not go unnoticed.
In an interview published Tuesday by the titles of the Swiss group Tamedia, Joseph Blatter, the former president of Fifa, admitted that the choice of Qatar was a mistake.
“Football and the World Cup are too big for that.
It was a bad choice and I was responsible for it at the time as president of Fifa, ”assumed the 86-year-old Swiss.
Initially, Fifa had considered giving the 2018 World Cup to Russia and then the next one four years later to the United States, which was the big favorite at the time.
"It would have been a gesture of peace if the two political adversaries had organized the World Cup one after the other," Blatter said.
A highly contested World Cup
The Swiss leader announced the choice of Qatar on December 2, 2010, during a FIFA congress in Zurich, of which he was then president (between 1998 and 2015).
A year ago, Joseph Blatter had already expressed his regrets in the columns of Le Monde.
"We can't change history," said Gianni Infantino's predecessor.
Remarks which are also part of a context where the World Cup in Qatar is strongly contested, both on the human aspect (the rights of workers and LGBT + people) and environmental (with air-conditioned stadiums).
This Sunday, ten European federations including Germany and England but not France, had responded to Fifa's request to focus only on football.
For them, there is no question of hiding the extra-sporting issues that tense public opinion.
