“For the World Cups, it was agreed that we go to Russia because it’s never been in Russia, Eastern Europe, and for 2022 we go back to America. And so we will have the World Cup in the two biggest political powers. And everything was good until the moment when [French president Nicolas] Sarkozy came in. In a meeting with the crown prince of Qatar, who is now the ruler of Qatar, and at a lunch afterwards with Mr Platini, he said it would be good to go to Qatar. And this has changed the whole pattern. If the USA was given the World Cup, we would only speak about the wonderful World Cup 2018 in Russia and we would not speak about any problems at Fifa.”