By Andrew Warshaw
December 17 – After protesting his innocence, Sepp Blatter was returning to the building where he has reigned for almost 18 years this morning to make a last-ditch defiant stand to save his battered reputation.
Blatter’s hearing before FIFA’s ethics judge Hans-Joachim Eckert was due to commence at 11am local time at FIFA headquarters in Zurich as he attempted to prevent his FIFA presidency ending in ignominy and preventing him personally handing over to his successor at the end of February when he is due to stand down.
Already suspended for 90 days stemming from being placed under criminal investigation, partly over that SFr2 million “disloyal payment” that FIFA made to Michel Platini on his behalf in 2011, the 79-year-old Swiss will again vehemently deny any wrongdoing.
But indications are that his protests will fall on deaf ears with a lengthy ban likely to be announced early next week for both him and Platini. Both are expected to appeal to try and clear their names.
Blatter is furious that he has been targeted by the same ethics committee his very administration created with his blessing. He says suggestions he and Platini could be banned for life are way over the top. “Disqualified for life? Even Platini. What did we do? Did we take all the money and escaped from FIFA? Did we kill someone?,” Blatter was quoted as saying in interviews with selected European media.
“I’m shocked. I was suspended for 90 days without the ethics committee even listening to me. So I will go with my excellent lawyer to defend myself: I want to be heard by the courts. In Switzerland they cannot sentence you to life without hearing you defend yourself.”
Blatter sent a letter to all FIFA’s 209 member nations on Monday strongly defending his conduct. “I wrote … so that they know too that, in all my life, I have never accepted any money I did not earn and I have always paid what I owed.”
Putting his side of the story over the notorious payment, Blatter said: “At the end of 1998 Michel told me: ‘I would like to work with you’. I said: ‘You are welcome’. He said: ‘Look, I’m a little expensive, a million a year ‘.
“I told him:’ Let’s see what I can do ‘. It was a valid verbal contract. There was the Goal project to help the poorest countries, there was the international calendar.”
“Then, surprisingly, he was elected to the executive committees of UEFA and FIFA – surprisingly for me because Europe did not love him because he was working with me. I did not concern myself any further with the matter of the payment, for one reason or another, but I gave the order to pay. The request (was) passed to the finance committee whose work is authorised by the Congress.”
Almost as if he knew what was coming his way next week, Blatter also used the opportunity to issue a powerful rebuke of the entire corruption scandal against FIFA – and of the campaign against him personally.
“All this trouble emerged around the World Cup qualifying competitions in the Americas. But FIFA cannot know the contracts of all the confederations. There is an anti-virus Blatter which should be eradicated. It started in UEFA and extends to the British.”
Blatter then provided a somewhat contradictory view of Platini, whose hearing takes place tomorrow but who has refused to attend in person, seemingly praising and criticising the Frenchman in the same breath.
“Platini would have been my natural successor, but it did not happen. He was attacked by the same virus. He is an honest man. Maybe a bit of prima donna. But not all of Europe is on his side. Many are with me and against him. Angel Villar, from Spain, he has stood by me.”
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