~snip~
These days, we can't separate football from politics or economics or any other domain. For the majority of people who attended it, the Qatar World Cup was one of the greatest in history, but due to some problems with some European countries, a big attack had started before the beginning of the tournament and continued throughout the whole tournament. I'm not defending Qatar here, but one should take all opinions into consideration. We can easily pretend that USA managed to win the 2026 World Cup organizing honor because they have a lot of money to buy the votes of many of the local federations, but in reality, they have introduced the best offer. Apart from this, FIFA always strives to make additional profit. There is no doubt about that, as profit facilitates the development of football in a lot of countries and helps increase the revenues of local federations.
Additionally, I don't know what benefit FIFA could make from Ecuador more than Chile. If this was the case, they would have manipulated something to make Italy attend the tournament.
It was actually true what Chile presented against Ecuador, because FIFA sanctioned Ecuador for this new World Cup. In a normal situation Ecuador would have had forfeited their points for the games where the player was on the field, and giving a win to the other team. Running the math you end up with Chile qualifying instead of Ecuador. That's what should have happened, per FIFA regulations.
I think the whole issue with Ecuador not being sanctioned for Qatar was that it was just too close to the start of the tournament.
At the end of the day there are practical considerations that need to be followed. No tournament is ever going to be perfect.
In any case, I think Ecuador got a really small penalty now (-3 points) compared to what they were supposed to have in Qatar.