*** 2022 FIFA WORLD CUP ***

'It's too small a country. Football and the World Cup are too big for that," Blatter,  who was acquitted of corruption last summer , told Tages-Anzeiger . “The choice for Qatar was a mistake. At the time, we agreed in the executive committee that Russia would have the 2018 World Cup and the US that of 2022. That would have been a gesture of peace if two long-standing political opponents would organize the World Cup one after the other.'

"A week before the 2010 FIFA congress, Michel Platini called me to say that our plan would not work," Blatter recalls the period in which Qatar was awarded the World Cup. He was invited to the palace of President Sarkozy who had just had lunch with the Crown Prince of Qatar. Sarkozy told Platini: ' Look what you and your UEFA colleagues can do for Qatar when the World Cup is awarded.' I then asked him: what now?'

Sepp, what would you do if your president asked you for something? ' I then told him that the question didn't occur to me because we don't have a president in Switzerland. 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 $14.6 billion.'