Michel Platini has acknowledged that he “might have told” American officials he would vote for the United States’ 2022 World Cup bid, before he voted for Qatar instead.
The Uefa president, among the candidates to replace Sepp Blatter at Fifa in February, has repeatedly come under pressure over his decision to back the controversial Qatar campaign during the bidding process in 2010.
Platini admitted he changed his mind about voting for the US after attending a November 2010 meeting hosted by the then-French president Nicolas Sarkozy at his official residence in Paris, which was also attended by senior Qatari officials.
However Platini repeated earlier denials of any impropriety surrounding that meeting and his decision, saying: “Sarkozy never asked me to vote for Qatar, but I knew what would be good.”
Despite the scrutiny of that decision, Platini insisted that under his leadershipFifa would make a clean break from past controversies, “restore its image” and become less about political deal-making.
“We have to care about the game, not politics,” he said. “With me, there won’t be politics. With me, it’s about football, not politics … there are a lot of good people in the executive committee. It’s only some that are corrupt. If you do something wrong, you will be taken care of.”
Platini also discussed the decision of certain Fifa executive members, including the Brazil FA president Marco Polo Del Nero, to stay away from this week’s executive committee meeting in Zurich.
Del Nero left Switzerland suddenly in May after other officials were arrested indramatic dawn raids on Fifa’s hotel, and has not travelled outside Brazil since. Del Nero has denied wrongdoing.
“It’s not the first time a member doesn’t come,” Platini said. “Of course we are in a strange situation at the moment, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many journalists here.”
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