March 11 – Germany’s outgoing FIFA executive committee member Theo Zwanziger has taken yet another opportunity to call for Qatar to be stripped of the 2022 World Cup.
A few days ago, Zwanziger targeted UEFA president Michel Platini for voting for the Gulf state and appears to be using his remaining time in office to have his voice increasingly heard.
Zwanziger, the former president of the Germany football association (DFB) who has long been critical of Qatar’s landslide ballot victory back in December 2010, acknowledges that the country will only miss out if Michael Garcia’s infamous report into the bid process throws up details of specific wrongdoing, if and when it is published.
“The best solution would be not to play in Qatar and to rectify this wrong awarding,” he told the radio station Bayern 2. “But that can only happen if the report provides sufficient clues that the awarding broke FIFA ethics rules.”
Garcia, the US attorney who investigated the corruption claims and drew up a 450-page report, resigned as head of the investigatory chamber of FIFA’s ethics committee in December saying his work had been compromised.
As well as the debate about a winter World Cup, the Gulf state has been heavily criticised over the conditions of migrant workers employed on construction sites.
“Qatar was not suitable to host such a World Cup for a number of reasons,” said Zwanziger, who steps down from FIFA in May.
“One has to tell candidates (for World Cups) that sports, football, the clubs and FIFA, they all represent values that we expect to be observed.”
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