Blatter hints at FIFA departures from the "football family"

By Andrew Warshaw at the Dolder Grand in Zurich

November 7 – For the second time in as many days, the FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, has hinted that heads could roll as part of his two-year plan to clean up the organisation after a year of unprecedented sleaze and scandal.

Speaking at the International Football Arena here, Blatter stopped short of detailing who might lose their positions at the top table of world football’s governing body.

But just as in his column for Insideworldfootball at the weekend, he used the occasion, round the corner from FIFA’s headquarters, to insist there was no going back and that his so-called road map to reform was a last-ditch attempt to restore the organisation’s reputation.

Blatter spent the first half of a 15-minute keynote address praising the various tournaments that have taken place across the world throughout the year and highlighting how football was a power for good in regions of the world that had become politically unstable.

But his 200-strong audience wanted only to hear one thing: what he would be doing about the stench of corruption that has tarnished more than a third of his Executive Committee.

Blatter has long referred in his Presidency to the football family but admitted he was not sure it was any longer united.

“I am taking this task very seriously,” said Blatter.

“I need the support of the community and also of the family – if they are still in the family.”

Blatter did not mention names but he will know as well as anyone that at least three more members of the FIFA Executive Committee – Issa Hayatou, Worawi Makudi and Ricardo Teixeira – are currently under suspicion for a range of separate alleged misdemeanours.

“I have difficulty from time to time to say it’s a family because you should be responsible for all the members,” he said.

“You must be aware that there are devils in society whether it’s violence, cheating, corruption, racism, doping, match fixing, illegal betting.

“We have our agenda, a road map where we want to go – have to go.”

“We want to be transparent and go through this procedure so that at the end of day, FIFA is better than it is today. For me it’s time to show what has been done in my 36 years since I’ve been working at FIFA.”

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