"The basic conditions – not just for Qatar, but for all the candidates – were the same. It means that the Fifa World Cup is played in June and July. That's the basic condition. It is my duty, my responsibility and my right to defend Fifa's principles. One of these principles was: June, July."Sepp Blatter, October 2012
"After many discussions, deliberations and critical review of the entire matter, I came to the conclusion that playing the World Cup in the heat of Qatar's summer was simply not a responsible thing to do." Sepp Blatter, September 2013
Fifa's president, the great survivor who has plotted his way through three controversial and sometimes corrosive decades atop world football's governing body, could teach George Orwell's Ministry of Truth a thing or two.
In Zurich on Thursday afternoon, nearly three years after the jaw-dropping vote to hand the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, Sepp Blatter began chairing a two-day meeting of a Fifa executive committee debating a decision that will have far-reaching consequences for the global game.
As he does so, the 77-year-old Swiss threatens to unleash wide-ranging chaos across the sporting landscape, provoke a huge backlash from the broadcasting partners that underpin Fifa's power with their billions and potentially hasten the demise of international football.
Whether or not Friday's announcement amounts to a decision in principle followed by a period of consultation, or simply the unveiling of a consultation period that will be followed later by a decision, is, to some extent, irrelevant. The direction of travel towards winter is firmly set.
Yet the move to shift the World Cup to winter for the first time in 92 years has been presented as though it is the only sane thing to do, as though the rationality of awarding the world's biggest sporting event to a country the size of Yorkshire where temperatures hit 50C in June was a given.
Fifa's own technical reports, largely ignored by the 22 voters swayed by other factors, highlighted the "potential health risk" for players, officials and spectators and ranked Qatar's plans for team facilities as "high risk".
Hugh Robertson, the British sports minister who can still appear dazed by the events of December 2010 when England's £21m bid for the 2018 tournament polled two votes, puts it succinctly. "Fifa's first concern should be for its athletes. So it was extraordinary that anybody ever seriously thought that you could play a major football competition in the June desert heat. For the health of the footballers it now has to be moved to a more temperate time," he said.
The 24 voting members of Fifa's executive committee present in the bunker-like boardroom in the basement of the governing body's £100m HQ (the Cypriot, Marios Lefkaratis, was expected to be only absentee) will on Friday discuss their next move. The November and December 2022 slot favoured by Blatter and his secretary general, Jérôme Valcke, remains the most likely option because it avoids a clash with the Winter Olympics and takes in two international breaks so would cause marginally less disruption.
Uefa's Michael Platini is keener on January 2022 because it would avoid disrupting Uefa's lucrative Champions League group phase.
It has fallen to Valcke to smooth the unlikely path to a winter World Cup by conducting secret meetings with broadcasters, including Fox in the US, and with the executives from the powerful European leagues who have led the protests. The Premier League has been among the most violently opposed to what it saw as a Fifa fait accompli. Behind the scenes there is a growing acceptance among the dissenters that a winter World Cup in Qatar is inevitable.
The goal now is to make sure it is delivered on their terms and to their timetable. Hence the more emollient mood music from some of the Fifa executive committee members, hinting that there may not be a definitive decision on Friday after all. Instead, we may see the unveiling of a lengthy consultation process that will inevitably lead to the same conclusion.
The Bundesliga has also made threatening sounds and perhaps the most worrying noises as far as Fifa is concerned came from the US broadcasting giants Fox and NBC, through its Telemundo subsidiary. Between them, they contribute $1bn to the Fifa cash cow that funds all its other activities – 87% of its revenues are directly generated by the World Cup.
Australia's call for compensation is not being taken seriously, with Fifa believing that its legal advice is sound and that the US and other losers are unlikely to join them in demanding redress for their failed bids.
It was Valcke who once said in a leaked email that Qatar had "bought" the World Cup, later insisting that he meant their huge financial muscle had enabled them to outgun rivals rather than insinuating any impropriety.
Like many decisions taken by Fifa, the winter move has been refracted through the lens not of what is best for world football but instead warped by the personal ambitions of those who pull the strings.
Blatter, despite insisting in 2011 that this would be his final term as "captain" of the then listing Fifa ship, appears to be gearing up to stand again in 2015.
Many well placed Fifa sources have interpreted his sudden conversion to the winter switch as an urgent desire to end the drip, drip of a corrosive issue before any presidential campaign. Meanwhile, it has not gone unnoticed that it also provides a convenient stick with which to beat Platini – the one-time heir apparent who appears to have become a bitter rival.
Blatter voted for the US while Platini loudly backed Qatar, beginning the lobbying for a switch to winter shortly after the vote was won. Blatter has probably calculated that any mud will stick to the Frenchman rather than him.
One of the many theories doing the rounds is that Blatter will stand again in 2015, but promise to hand over power within two years to a favoured successor.
Even as Fifa settles down to debate the switch to winter and belatedly address the treatment of migrant construction workers in Qatar, as highlighted by a Guardian investigation which emphasised the scale of the loss of life, doubts still remain over the means by which the Gulf state won.
Michael Garcia, the former district attorney for South New York appointed as head of the investigatory arm of Fifa's ethics committee, plans to travel to each of the nine bidding countries for 2018 and 2022 in one final push to collate any evidence of wrongdoing. Amid continued scepticism in some quarters about the value of his work given that he cannot compel witnesses to give evidence, Garcia nevertheless asserts his independence and believes he is making headway in an investigation he plans to complete by March.
The question remains whether or not the unprecedented spending spree by Qatar – from the expensively acquired ambassadors to the overseas training facilities, from the sponsorship of the Confederation of African Football Congress to the vote-swapping pacts – amounted to a breach of the rules. Given that those rules remained completely unfocused, ill-drawn and poorly policed for the vast majority of the dual race, he faces an uphill task. In the three years since, the methods by which Qatar secured victory have become clearer.
Platini, while denying the decision was anything other than his, has admitted to meeting the son of the then Emir, the Qatari prime minister and the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, before the vote. Later, the Qatar Investment Authority bought Paris St-Germain and concluded a series of major trade deals with France. Sarkozy appeared at a conference in Doha in December to argue for the World Cup to be moved to winter. Meanwhile, Platini's son Laurent was hired as the chief executive of a Qatari sports brand.
This week France Football outlined a series of trade alliances between the Cypriot Lefkaritis and Qatar, who he is believed to have voted for. Similar backstories may well lie behind the majority of the 14 voters who ultimately backed Qatar in the final round of voting against the US.
Blatter last week suggested that many of the European voters had been influenced by political and economic pressure in their homeland. "Nearly half of the Exco has changed since December 2010," said Jérôme Champagne, the former senior Fifa administrator who knows its workings as well as anyone after 11 years at the top table before he was ousted during internal politicking in 2011. "I very much welcome the change we have seen in that time, but there needs to be a wider discussion about the shape of football in the 21st century. If we want a more democratic Fifa, we need a more respected Fifa."
Champagne advocates wholesale reform of the executive committee to make it more answerable to the 209 national associations and representative of other parts of the game, including the professional leagues and the players.
Those who believe there may yet be a spectacular denouement to this very modern morality tale point to a letter sent to the bidders in the summer of 2010 that belatedly established some ground rules for contact with Exco members.
A dramatic revote is not yet completely out of the question. The more pressing issue for the Qatar organisers is showing that they take the urgent issue of improving the rights of construction workers seriously. Shamed into action, Blatter is expected to issue a tough warning on that matter on Friday.
Yet the most likely outcome remains that Blatter will pilot the move to winter through whatever combination of announcements, working parties and consultation periods are announced.
The Fifa president has even tried to claim the entire sorry mess – not, admittedly, entirely of his making – as a gift to global harmony. "Frankly, if we automatically exclude potential hosts because of the weather, then the next step can easily be exclusion for other arbitrary and discriminatory reasons. I am not going to be party to any such thing," he said recently.
With Fifa's usual lofty air, and however it is dressed up, the direction of travel is set with Blatter – as ever – at the helm. No one knows where it will yet lead.
