Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter appears prominently in the new Netflix four-part documentary ‘FIFA Uncovered,’ which premieres on the eve of the 2022 Qatar World Cup.
FIFA voted in 2010 to hold the 2022 tournament in the small but gas-rich Gulf nation, sparking widespread outrage and calls for an investigation into how the executive committee voted for a country with little or no football culture or heritage.
Tepid FIFA-sponsored investigations have failed to produce a clear conclusion that there was any wrongdoing with the Qatari bid, but in May 2015, the US indicted 14 former FIFA officials and associates on charges of “rampant, systemic, and deep-rooted” corruption following a major FBI investigation that resulted in subsequent detentions.
Blatter, who became FIFA president in 1998, is asked in the documentary how he feels about the fact that only one of the 2010 executive committee’s 22 members is still in office, with the majority serving temporary or lifetime bans, and he bats the question away, claiming that he cannot be held responsible for the actions of ‘others from different nations and cultures.’
Blatter: ‘Holding the World Cup in Qatar is a mistake’
Blatter recently admitted to a Swiss daily that “the World Cup in Qatar is a mistake,” adding that “the choice was bad.”
“It’s a too small country.” “It’s too big for football and the World Cup,” Blatter said of Qatar, the first Middle Eastern country to host the tournament.
Blatter, who was cleared of fraud charges by a Swiss court earlier this year after allegations of financial misconduct, insists he never voted for Qatar to host the event.
The most moving moment in the Netflix documentary comes from former FIFA media director Guido Tognoni, who says. “If you ask whether Fifa can ever be free of corruption, you have to ask whether the world can ever be free of corruption,” he says. “Not at all. No, as it currently stands. “Not at all.”
