Despite the fact that FIFA is being investigated for corruption by the U.S. and Swiss authorities, Sepp Blatter was re-elected as FIFA president on Friday.
Blatter has been the president of FIFA since 1998.He was elected to another four-year term, his fifth term as FIFA’s president, after Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan conceded after losing 133-73 in the first round of voting, according to the Associated Press. UEFA president Michel Platini and other had called for Blatter to resign. Platini said on Thursday that UEFA would pull out of FIFA and the World Cup if Blatter was re-elected.
"I am now the president of everybody. I thank you, I thank that you have accepted me," Blatter said. "We will bring this boat back, we will bring it back to shore. We have some organisational problems. We need women in this committee, we have to do more. I will not touch the World Cup, it is too important. I take responsibility to bring back FIFA, with you we will do it, I am convinced.”
He went on to add that it will take time to rebuild FIFA’s reputation and that he’s appealing to unity and team spirit so that they can move forward together.
As previously reported, on Wednesday the U.S. Department of Justice charged nine FIFA officials and five corporate executives with corruption charges. They have been charged with racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering and other related offenses. They are also accused of accepting about $150 million in bribes over the last two decades. Blatter wasn’t one of the FIFA officials who were arrested and charged. He says that the crisis that FIFA is currently in comes from the decision to award Russia and Qatar the next two World Cups, according to ESPN. Russia will host the 2018 World Cup and Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup. The U.S. was one of the losing bidders for the 2022 Cup.
Blatter has blamed other people for bringing shame and humiliation to the sport of soccer. He needs to make changes in FIFA soon otherwise it could cost FIFA big. Visa, a big sponsor of FIFA, warned on Thursday that it could pull out of its contract which is worth at least $25 million a year through 2022.
There has been a critical error on your website.<\/p>
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.<\/a><\/p>","data":{"status":500},"additional_errors":[]}