Blatter reiterates meddling claim

Suspended FIFA president Sepp Blatter has repeated claims that government interference from then French president Nicolas Sarkozy resulted in Qatar rather than the United States being awarded the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

Speaking to Friday's edition of Britain's Financial Times, Blatter repeated the claims he made on Wednesday to Russian news agency TASS that FIFA's executive committee had originally agreed to award the 2018 tournament to Russia and the next World Cup to the United States.

Blatter told the FT that there had been a "gentleman's agreement" that the two World Cups in question would go to the "two superpowers".

"It was behind the scenes. It was diplomatically arranged to go there," said Blatter, who has found himself at the centre of a FIFA corruption storm ever since being re-elected to a fifth term in May.

However, as he stated on Wednesday, Blatter, who is set to stand down after February's FIFA presidential election, said Sarkozy's influence moved the goalposts.

"Just one week before the election I got a telephone call from Platini and he said, 'I am no longer in your picture because I have been told by the head of state that we should consider ... the situation of France'. And he told me that this will affect more than one vote because he had a group of voters."

Platini, the suspended UEFA chief, admitted to voting for Qatar at the election in December 2010 when the World Cups were awarded to Russia and the tiny desert kingdom, but denied doing so on the orders of Sarkozy, who was French president from 2007-2012, despite the latter having not long beforehand invited him to dinner with the future Qatari emir.