Cup ambassador calls homosexuality ‘damage in the mind’ as Blatter admits Qatar mistake

Awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar was “a bad choice,” Sepp Blatter, who was president of soccer’s world governing body at the time of the 2010 decision, said, claiming that an agreement between French and Qatari officials swayed votes.

“It’s a country that’s too small,” Blatter, the leader of FIFA for 17 years before he stepped down in 2015, told the Swiss newspaper group Tamedia on Tuesday in his first comments since being acquitted of corruption charges by a Swiss court in July. Prosecutors have appealed the decision. “Football and the World Cup are too big for that.”

Sepp Blatter announces that Qatar will be hosting the 2022 Soccer World Cup in 2010.Credit: AP

The smallest host by size since the 1954 tournament took place in Switzerland, Qatar will host 32 teams that will play 64 games in eight stadiums in and around Doha, the site of massive and controversial construction projects for the tournament, which begins November 20. Over a million visitors are expected, but many will commute from neighbouring countries because of limited places to stay in Qatar.

“It was a bad choice, and I was responsible for that as president at the time,” Blatter said.

A bid by the US, which Blatter has said he voted for, fell short in the final round of voting among five candidates. It is believed Qatar beat out the US during a meeting hosted in Paris by Nicolas Sarkozy, then president of France, the week before the December 2010 vote by FIFA’s executive committee. Australia was also considered a popular choice for the tournament, yet earned just one vote and were eliminated in the first round.

Present at the meeting were Michel Platini (the former French soccer great who was then-president of UEFA, the European soccer body) and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, then the crown prince of Qatar and now the emir.

Blatter claimed, as he has in the past, that Sarkozy pressured Platini, repeating his version of a telephone call from Platini saying that the voting plan had changed.

“Thanks to the four votes of Platini and his [UEFA] team, the World Cup went to Qatar rather than the US. It’s the truth,” Blatter said of the 14-8 vote.

“Sarkozy never asked me to vote for Qatar, but I knew what would be good,” Platini told the Associated Press seven years ago, acknowledging he “might have told” American officials that he would be voting for their 2022 bid. Along with Blatter, Platini also was acquitted of corruption charges over the summer.

Since winning the bid, Qatar has come under criticism for human rights issues and working conditions at tournament-related construction sites, something Blatter did not directly address other than to say “social considerations and human rights are taken into account” since FIFA’s criteria for host countries was amended in 2012.

A countdown clock showing remaining time until the World Cup kick-off in Doha.Credit: AP

Another issue as the tournament approaches is concern for LGBTQ tourists in Qatar, where officials have reportedly arbitrarily arrested and mistreated LGBTQ people. That issue returned to the fore this week when Khalid Salman, a former Qatari national team player who is an ambassador for the World Cup, called homosexuality a “damage in the mind” in an interview with German public broadcaster ZDF. He added that being gay is “haram” - forbidden in Arabic - and that he has a problem with children seeing gay people.

“During the World Cup, many things will come here to the country. Let’s talk about gays,” Salman said in English. “The most important thing is, everybody will accept that they come here, but they will have to accept our rules.”

The interview was cut short by a media officer of the World Cup organising committee, ZDF reported.

The Washington Post

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