By Andrew Warshaw
October 29 – Michel d’Hooghe, Belgium’s long-serving FIFA executive committee member, has dismissed Sepp Blatter’s remarkable disclosure of a fixed agreement to hand the 2018 World Cup to Russia, insisting no pre-vote deal took place.
Blatter, currently suspended by FIFA’s ethics committee, revealed the tournament was lined up to go to Russia in advance of the actual joint ballot in December 2010, with the 2022 World Cup to be held in the USA, until UEFA president Michel Platini decided to throw his weight behind Qatar for the latter event.
“It was agreed inside the group that we go to Russia because it has never been to eastern Europe, and for 2022 we go back to America,” said the beleaguered FIFA president who steps down on February 26 in the wake of the biggest corruption scandal in sporting history. “And so we would have the World Cup in the two biggest political powers.”
Blatter’s unsubstantiated remarks, part of a wide-ranging, no-holds-barred interview with the Russian news agency Tass, have caused a global outcry with many questioning whether his motive was simply to dig the knife into Platini, his one-time protégé turned adversary.
But d’Hooghe, whose country bid jointly for 2018 with Holland, picking up four votes and missing out along with England and Spain/Portugal, said he had never heard of such an accord and implied Blatter’s comments were somewhat fanciful.
“I cannot believe this is true or that there was any kind of agreement,” d’Hooghe told Insideworldfootball. “I was not part of any such discussion and think I would have known about it.”
Both contests were by secret ballot and Blatter also revealed that for 2022, four European votes switched from the USA to Qatar.
“How does he know that if the vote was held in secret?” asked d’Hooghe, the 69-year-old chairman of FIFA’s medical committee. “I don’t know why Blatter is saying these things. Maybe you should ask him. I was never ever once influenced how to vote. I voted with full freedom.”
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