Even with five rivals, it was never even. When FIFA president Sepp Blatter opened the envelope on stage in Zurich on 2 December 2010, he named a supreme winner. Qatar led the poll throughout. They crushed the USA 14–8 in the final round. The desert country became the first Arab nation ever to win the World Cup. A few days earlier, the British newspaper Daily Mail had quoted an anonymous source who had worked for Qatar’s bid. – I don’t think Qatar will win. I know. When she got it right, the world was shocked. Qatar had 1.9 million inhabitants, more than 90 percent of whom were migrant workers. It gets to 50 degrees in the summer. Qatar needed nine new stadiums and new cities. In the FIFA ranking, the national team was number 112. Even FIFA had said that the bid came with “high risk”. Qatar had fought against Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States. The Americans had given the world a brilliant World Cup in 1994, and now fielded ambassadors such as Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, Brad Pitt, Spike Lee and Arnold Schwarzenegger. When Qatar had won, writes The Telegraph newspaper, Clinton went to the hotel and smashed a mirror. FURIOUS: Bill Clinton is said to have been furious after Qatar won the World Cup in 2022 ahead of the United States. Photo: Steffen Schmidt / AP Accusations of corruption hung over Qatar’s bid even before it won. They have never disappeared, and come from witnesses, journalists and the US Department of Justice. But Qatar’s World Cup committee has always denied any wrongdoing. Regardless, it is possible to understand how Qatar won. news has spoken to James Corbett, senior correspondent for Off The Pitch, a website about football’s politics and finance. Corbett followed the WC bid all the way. When Blatter opened the envelope, he had seen enough to believe Qatar could win. – I remember getting up that day and thinking: “Anything is possible”. “Expect amazing” Corbett believes it is easy to forget that Qatar’s bid was technically strong. With the slogan “expect amazing”, they promised a World Cup for “the entire Middle East” with new stadiums and technology that would cool down fans and players. – Many have said that Qatar’s bid was bad or had “high risk”. I wouldn’t put too much into it. They had a very interesting and innovative proposition. It required imagination and you had to ignore the temperature because there was always a big chance it would be moved to winter. Technically, the bid was strong. They had enough money to do whatever they wanted, says Corbett to news. The offer was part of a larger plan. Since the 90s, the ruling Al-Thani family had used oil money for political influence. They had become home to America’s largest military base in the Middle East. They had invested in art, sports and property around the world. In 2003, Qatar’s top football league had been given money to buy aging stars such as Pep Guardiola, Gabriel Batistuta and Frank Leboeuf. Later, Qatar organized a number of sporting events, including the Asian Games in 2006. Now they wanted the World Cup – at any cost – with Zinédine Zidane as ambassador. AMBASSADOR: Zinédine Zidane became an ambassador for the WC in Qatar. Photo: KARIM JAAFAR / AFP But the real mission was simple: They had to get the support of FIFA’s executive committee, a group of 24 men who would vote on the bids. These 24 were heads of national or continental football associations. Since they made the most important decisions for the organization that governs the world’s biggest sport, they lived like royalty. They stayed in luxurious hotels. They had private drivers. They traveled the world at banquets and VIP events. They hated the press and wanted to keep as much as possible secret. With good reason. The committee would prove to be riddled with corruption. Two of them didn’t even get to vote. Journalists from The Sunday Times met Amos Adamu and Reynald Temarii posing as people from a consortium that wanted the World Cup in the United States. Adamu was from Nigeria, Temarii was president of the Oceania Football Association. Adamu asked them for $800,000 in exchange for his vote. Temarii wanted $2.3 million to build a soccer academy in New Zealand. FIFA kicked both out of the committee. Now there were 22 members left. What were the rules to convince them? In short: They didn’t exist. Corbett explains: – There were no guidelines for how the bids were to be carried out. There were no proper rules. There were no proper criteria for what the WC should represent with regard to social and economic development. It was free forward. The emir’s tour Qatar understood that the heads of the various associations were closely linked to the state leaders. If they were to get votes, they had to run politics at the highest level. They started with the Congress of the Confederation of African Football, which was held in Angola in January 2010. Qatar sponsored it with one million pounds, according to FIFA’s investigation into the bid, the so-called Garcia Report. They were allowed, as the only country, to give a presentation there. There were three Africans left on the executive committee: Issa Hayatou (Cameroon), Jacques Anouma (Ivory Coast) and Hany Abo Rida (Egypt). This congress is the scene of one of the biggest allegations of corruption by Qatar. Phaedra Almajid worked for the country’s World Cup bid. She says she was in the room when Qatar offered $1.5 million each to Hayatou and Anouma for their votes. The money was to go to the two football associations. Qatar has always denied this. It was Almajid who anonymously said that Qatar was going to win, before she later came forward with her full name. In any case, Qatar had done a job in Africa. Then the country’s Emir at the time, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, went on a tour of South America. THE EMIR: Qatar’s then Emir, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, meets Hugo Chávez, then President of Venezuela, in 2010. Photo: Juan CAMACHO / AFP In 2010, he visited a number of countries, among them Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. All three had people on the committee: Julio Grondona (Argentina), Ricardo Teixeira (Brazil) and Nicolás Leoz (Paraguay), who was also president of the South American Football Confederation. That year, Qatar made major trade deals with all three countries. The state-owned airline, Qatar Airways, opened its first routes to Buenos Aires and São Paulo. In November 2010, Qatar organized a friendly match between Argentina and Brazil in Doha. At the same time, there were rumors of a collaboration. In September 2010, Corbett was in Doha when FIFA inspectors turned up to analyze Qatar’s World Cup bid. There he heard from a journalist that Mohamed Bin Hammam and Angel Maria Villar had entered into an agreement. Qatari Bin Hammam was president of the Asian Football Confederation and had good contacts in Africa. Villas was head of the Spanish federation and had strong ties to his colleagues in South America. Spain and Portugal wanted to share the World Cup in 2018. The agreement was supposedly that Villar and Bin Hammam would support each other’s bids. – That was the moment when I understood that Qatar were real candidates, says Corbett. AGREEMENT: There were rumors of a collaboration between Mohamed Bin Hammam, pictured, and Angel Maria Villar. Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP Blatter recently said that this agreement existed. Qatar has denied it, and the Garcia report found no evidence. In any case, Bin Hammam was an important piece, says Martyn Ziegler, sports reporter in The Times newspaper. – In the Garcia report, Qatar is very clear that Bin Hammam was not part of the bid. But he definitely worked to gather support for Qatar, says Ziegler to news. Qatar thought they had control over South America. In November 2010, the Emir was in Egypt to meet President Hosni Mubarak. Rida, head of Egypt’s football federation, voted for Qatar. Now only Qatar had to get the votes from Europe. The meeting in Paris So the Emir went to Cyprus, where he agreed with President Demetris Christofias to build property in the capital Nicosia worth $150 million. The president of the Football Association, Mario Lefkaritis, also sold land to Qatar for $32 million. Lefkaritis voted for Qatar. He has denied that the trade affected his vote. The most controversial friendship was between Qatar and France, which had Michel Platini, the president of European football’s confederation. This had been going on for a while. When Nikolas Sarkozy became the country’s president in 2007, the emir was the first head of state to visit him. In 2010, a meeting was held in the Elysée Palace nine days before the WC votes were cast. This was between Sarkozy and the then crown prince of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, who is today the emir. Part of the meeting was Platini. According to Platini, the crown prince offered to buy Paris Saint-Germain, Sarkozy’s favorite team, which was struggling. What did the crown prince want in return? Platini’s support for Qatar. Later, Sarkozy told Platini that it would be a “good thing” if he voted for Qatar. THE PRESIDENT: Nikolas Sarkozy is said to have told Platini (right) that it would be a “good thing” if he voted for a World Cup in Qatar. Photo: Laurent Gillieron / AP Platini voted for Qatar. In 2011, Qatari BeIN Sports bought the rights to Ligue 1 and thus pumped a fortune into French football. Qatar bought PSG. Laurent Platini, Michel’s son, got a job as a legal adviser to Qatar Sports Investments, the company that took over PSG. In 2015, France sold 24 aircraft to Qatar worth seven billion dollars. But there is disagreement about the order of these events. Ziegler has interviewed Platini, who claims that he had decided to vote for Qatar before meeting Sarkozy and the crown prince. – He always says that he would vote for Qatar because he wanted a World Cup for the entire Middle East. He wanted several countries in the Gulf to share it, and for it to be moved to the winter. He also says that he himself decided on this, and that Sarkozy then used it to enter into agreements with Qatar, says Ziegler. Ziegler adds: – Blatter says it happened in the opposite order. In any case, the geopolitical factors were important. FOOTBALL TOPS: Fifa boss Sepp Blatter and Uefa boss Michel Platini. Photo: FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP Blatter has said that Platini called him a week before the vote to say that at least four votes from Europe would go to Qatar. Blatter, who supported the United States, realized that the battle was lost. Ziegler says Platini was decisive. – He brought three other votes from Europe with him. If he had done as Blatter wanted, and voted for the USA, then the WC would have gone to the USA. With such supporters, Qatar was superb. According to The Guardian, the country spent 200 million dollars on its bid. Those who spent the second most were Australia, with 42.7 million. Corbett summarizes the process like this: – It was a game without rules. And Qatar clearly mastered it best. – Qatar bought the WC Then came more accusations. The Sunday Times has said it has received documents showing Bin Hammam gave $1.6 million to Jack Warner, then president of the Football Association of North and Central America and the Caribbean Islands. Warner voted for Qatar. The newspaper also claims that Bin Hammam distributed money to presidents of 30 football associations in Africa. Qatar has responded by again denying that Bin Hammam was part of the World Cup bid. Almajid maintains that Qatar offered 1.5 million each for the votes of Hayatou and Anouma. The US Department of Justice has said that Grondona, Teixeira and Leoz accepted bribes for their votes. An email leaked in 2011 showed FIFA’s general secretary, Jerome Valcke, saying Qatar had “bought” the World Cup. No one doubts that the committee was largely morally rotten. Among the 22, 16 have either been banned from football, charged or imprisoned for corruption. But Qatar has always denied all accusations. Years ago, Blatter was asked if he thought Qatar had bought votes. – I don’t know, because I haven’t seen the details, said Blatter, before adding: – But in football, in the battle for the World Cup, anything is possible. Sources: BBC, Daily Mail, FIFA, Human Rights Watch, KingFut, New York Post, Property Wire, Reuters, The Blizzard, The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times.
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The WC coup – Sport Langlesing
