Kandiderar som ny Fifa-bas: ”Ta VM från Qatar”

Världsmästerskapet i fotboll 2022 kommer att spelas i Qatar. Detta beslutades av Fifas exekutivkommitté efter en omröstning i Zürich den 2 december 2010. Det blir herrarnas 22:a VM-turnering genom tiderna. Qatar (som har cirka 2,3 milj invånare varav en femtedel är qatarier medan resten är gästarbetare) kommer att bli den minsta nationen någonsin att arrangera ett fotbolls-VM. Både beslutet att anordna mästerskapet i Qatar och förhållandena för byggarbetarna, varav 1 400 stycken uppskattas ha dött, har kritiserats.

Jérôme Champagne (born June 15, 1958 in Paris) is a former French diplomat who served from 1983 to 1998, and then became a consultant in international football, serving as an executive at FIFA from 1999 to 2010. He transitioned from diplomacy to football as a result of the 1998 FIFA World Cup, where he was Diplomatic Advisor and Chief of Protocol of the French organizing committee. He then joined FIFA where he successively held the positions of international adviser to the President (1999–2002), Deputy Secretary General (2002–05), Delegate of the President (2005–07) and finally Director of International Relations (2007–10) during the terms of President Sepp Blatter. He left FIFA in 2010 and became football commissioner for the World Festival of Black Arts in Dakar (2010) and an adviser to the Palestinian Football Federation (PFA) and the Palestine Olympic Committee (POC), the Football Federation of Kosovo, the Cyprus Turkish Football Federation (CTFA) and finally the Congolese football club TP Mazembe of Lubumbashi. Champagne was one of many wanting to challenge Blatter in FIFA's 2015 election for its presidency. He declared himself a candidate in September 2014, but withdrew in February 2015 after failing to get enough support. However, in October 2015 he declared himself a candidate for the 2016 election for the presidency following the corruption investigation and Blatter's suspension.