Sepp Blatter Calls Qatar A Mistake

A comment made 10 years too late

Sepp Blatter has admitted that giving Qatar the 2022 World Cup was a 'mistake' and revealed where he thinks this year's tournament should have been held instead.

It's a contribution which may have been more useful if he'd said it while he was still FIFA president and the competition wasn't less than two weeks away from starting.

Speaking to Swiss publication Tages-Anzeiger, the former FIFA president who resigned in 2015 amidst a corruption scandal admitted that Qatar was too small to host an event as large as the World Cup.

He said: "The choice of Qatar was a mistake. It's too small a country. Football and the World Cup are too big for that.

"At the time, we actually agreed in the executive committee that Russia should get the 2018 World Cup and the USA that of 2022.

"It would have been a gesture of peace if the two long-standing political opponents had hosted the World Cup one after the other."

Blatter was head of FIFA back in 2010 when Qatar was awarded the 2022 World Cup and admitted it was his fault, saying: "I was responsible for that as president at the time."

Here's just a few reasons giving the World Cup to Qatar was a mistake:

• Qatar's appalling record on human rights, especially when it comes to women and the LGBTQ+ community.

• At least 37 migrant workers have officially died working on the construction of new stadiums to play the World Cup in, though The Guardian reports that over 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since it was awarded the competition.

• The extreme heat that's forced the World Cup to be played in the winter, destroying the flow of domestic leagues.

"My bad" though says Sepp.