The scandalous FIFA president, who led the organization from 1998 to 2015, stated that Qatar received the rights to the 2022 World Cup unfairly. The 82-year-old Swiss claims that his colleagues from the FIFA Executive Committee ignored warnings that Qatar should not be allowed to organize the global competition. According to him, the Executive Committee did not withstand political pressure and together with former UEFA president Michel Platini, voted for Qatar's rights to host the biggest sporting event. Blatter claims that the committee should have revoked the decision to allow Qatar to organize the tournament in 2016, when the organization received a report about the future host. "If we carefully read the entire report, we would immediately understand that Qatar cannot be trusted to organize the World Cup," the Swiss wrote in his book. Blatter points out that Platini changed his opinion about voting against Qatar after meeting with Nicolas Sarkozy (former President of France) and Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in 2010. Platini denied this information, but the former FIFA president provided a completely different version. "I do not know and do not want to know if there is a connection between the World Cup in Qatar and what happened in France afterwards," said Blatter, mentioning that Qatar invested billions of euros in airline companies in France and acquired the same in Paris.
