Posts Tagged ‘Michel Platini’

It is time to take the 2022 World Cup away from Qatar

June 1, 2014

If FIFA is to retain any semblance of credibility they need to re-run the selection process for the 2022 World Cup. This time without Qatar participating.  That won’t stop the corruption of course but at least it could clean out the stable before it is despoiled again.

The latest revelations in the Sunday Times (paywalled but reported by the BBC) merely confirm that Qatar did buy selection.

BBC:

Fifa is facing fresh allegations of corruption over its controversial decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar.

The Sunday Times  has obtained millions of secret documents – emails, letters and bank transfers – which it alleges are proof that the disgraced Qatari football official Mohamed Bin Hammam made payments totalling $5m to football officials in return for their support for the Qatar bid.

…….. the Sunday Times alleges Bin Hammam’s strategy was to win a groundswell of support for the Qatari bid which would then influence the four African Fifa executive committee members who were able to take part in the election.

The Sunday Times also alleges that it has documents which prove Bin Hammam paid 305,000 Euros (£250,000) to cover the legal expenses of another former Fifa executive committee member from Oceania, Reynald Temarii.

Temarii, from Tahiti, was unable to vote in the contest as he had already been suspended by Fifa after he was caught out by a Sunday Times sting asking bogus American bid officials for money in return for his support.

But the paper now alleges that Bin Hammam provided him with financial assistance to allow him to appeal against the Fifa suspension, delaying his removal from the executive committee and blocking his deputy David Chung from voting in the 2022 election.

The paper claims that had Chung been allowed to vote he would have supported Qatar’s rivals Australia. Instead there was no representative from Oceania allowed to vote, a decision which may have influenced the outcome in Qatar’s favour. The paper also makes fresh allegations about the relationship between Bin Hammam and his disgraced Fifa ally Jack Warner, from Trinidad. ….. 

That Qatar bought its selection was already known.

But what now becomes obvious is that many of the FIFA officials currently in power and including Sepp Blatter have known about this for some time. Some of them were probably involved themselves.

A Qatar World Cup will probably break all records in the number of deaths per goals scored. The competition will probably have to be shifted to the winter.

It is time for FIFA and Sepp Blatter to bite the bullet and take the 2022 World Cup away from Qatar. Blatter will probably try to pin the blame for Qatar on Michel Platini.

It would be best if neither Platini or Blatter stood for the FIFA Presidency next year.

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FIFA Presidential electioneering underway as Blatter blames Platini, France and Germany for selling 2022 World Cup to Qatar

May 17, 2014

FIFA Presidential electioneering for 2015 is underway as Sepp Blatter (who is Swiss) blames Michel Platini (who is French), France and Germany for selling the 2022 World Cup to Qatar. But this attack is just positioning by Blatter in case the 2014 World Cup in Brazil doesn’t go too well and Blatter will have to take that blame.

FIFA bows primarily to financial inducements (not political pressure as it sometimes appears). In many cases the financial inducements are just simple, straight-forward  bribery implemented in a very sophisticated manner. Even after the FIFA technical committee had clearly indicated that Qatar was unsuitable as a location for a World Cup tournament, the Executive Committee decided otherwise. That Qatar bought the 2022 World Cup is clear and it seems likely that the number of deaths per goal will be the highest ever by a long way in 2022.

Qatar 2022 will achieve more deaths than goals

Based on the track record of World Cup Tournaments, the Qatar 2022 championship will see between 100 and 180 goals – most likely around 150. But this number will be easily exceeded by the number of construction workers who have been killed by then. Already over 70 Nepalese workers have died since 2012 and the total number is probably around 200. By 2022 this number will exceed 1000.

Perhaps FIFA could introduce a safety performance index for the Qatar World Cup? Maybe to have less than 6 deaths per goal?

FIFA’s next presidential election is in 2015 and Sepp Blatter will be trying to retain his seat and Michel Platini will probably be opposing him. And so the electioneering has begun. This year’s World Cup is less than a month away and kicks-off on June 12th. The stadiums and infrastructure are still not quite ready. A fiasco in Brazil will be blamed on Sepp Blatter and will undermine his chances in 2015 of being President again. For some time now he has been trying to ensure that anything negative to do with Qatar is tied to Platini. Come 2015 Platini will have to deal with the Qatari dirt if he opposes Blatter.

A plague on both their houses!

November 2013: Sepp Blatter Now Blames France and Germany for 2022 World Cup Fiasco

Always looking to blame somebody else, Sepp Blatter hasn’t let us down by now blaming France and Germany for the 2022 World Cup mess in Qatar. According to theFIFA fool, these two nations are to blame for the ongoing turmoil regarding Qatar hosting the 2022 event. In addition, he believes they’re also accountable for some of the ill treatment of the migrant workers over there, along with the construction firms. 

Blatter said on November 22 that France and Germany exerted a lot of political pressure to grant Qatar with the World Cup because of their financial interests and they’re the two biggest economies in Europe. In Blatter’s own words, there was a lot of “political pressure from European countries…because there were so many economic interests. Two of these countries pressured the voting men in FIFA: France and Germany…I think the heads of state of these two countries should also express what they think of this situation.” 

March 2014: Only I Can Beat Sepp Blatter In FIFA Elections – Platini

“Only one person can beat Blatter,” Platini said at UEFA congress in Astana (quotes from Reuters). 

Platini told the UEFA Congress he would have more meetings with European football leaders in coming months before announcing whether he would stand for FIFA.

“I will give my answer after the World Cup. There will be a series of meetings with European federation officials. Maybe 99% of them will say ‘we prefer that you stay at UEFA’, that could also be an element of reflection” in the decision, Platini said.

Meanwhile, the Frenchman earlier blasted the world federation’s lack of action over secretive companies owning players as he stepped up a war of nerves with Blatter. Platini said the so-called ‘third party ownership’ of players is a “danger” to football.

May 2014: Sepp Blatter: awarding 2022 World Cup to Qatar was a mistake

“Yes, it was a mistake of course, but one makes lots of mistakes in life,” said Blatter, Fifa’s president, in an interview with the Swiss broadcaster RTS. “The technical report into Qatar said clearly it was too hot but the executive committee – with a large majority – decided all the same to play it in Qatar.”

… Blatter is believed to have voted for the USA to host the 2022 World Cup while his prospective rival for the presidency, Uefa’s Michel Platini, voted for Qatar and has been closely linked in the public mind with the controversial plans for the 2022 tournament.

The Fifa inspection team ranked Qatar as the only “high risk” option overall, yet it was still chosen by 14 of the 22 voting members of the executive committee in December 2010. ….. 

Platini and others have denied being influenced by their heads of state into voting for Qatar for business reasons. ….. 

“I will never say that they bought it, because it was political pushing. Really, both in France and Germany,” said Blatter, who has previously claimed there was “definitely direct political influence” on European executive committee members to vote for Qatar.

France’s foreign ministry said the assertion was “without foundation”, despite the fact that Platini has admitted to attending a high level meeting with former president Nicolas Sarkozy and the now Qatari Emir.

 

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