By Andrew Warshaw
February 19 – Outgoing FIFA president Sepp Blatter insists he has no preferred candidate to take his place but says he has spoken with four of the five contenders in the build-up to next week’s election.
“I can’t take sides, it’s not possible,” said Blatter as he took to the airwaves Thursday evening for a one-hour interview a week before he is replaced. Asked whether Prince Ali bin al-Hussein, who took him on and lost in May, was the candidate who had not sought his views, he replied: “You can deduce it was perhaps him that was against me.”
But Blatter also revealed, tellingly, that “several” of FIFA’s 209 member federations had called asking him how they should vote. “Vote with your conscience. Vote for who you find good,” Blatter said he told them. “Do what you feel is best for FIFA in your soul.”
Blatter was giving his first interview, to French radio station RMC, since appearing before the FIFA appeals committee on Tuesday to challenge his eight-year ban. He fiercely defended his former secretary general, Jerome Valcke, who has been banned for 12 years by FIFA’s ethics committee. “You can attack me, and I can defend myself, but you can’t attack the secretary general Valcke,” Blatter told his French interviewers.
Valcke was found guilty of seven charges of misconduct, which included using private jets for sightseeing trips. Blatter, who picked Valcke as number two in 2007, said he knew of the private flights at FIFA’s expense but that the Frenchman worked hard. “This is a question of financial controls, not ethics. He managed FIFA well. Now we have an organisation with reserves of $1.3 billion.”
In a live interview, Blatter, who soon turns 80, repeated many of his claims about why FIFA fell into a corruption crisis. He himself is subject of criminal proceedings opened by Switzerland’s attorney general. Once again he accused the American authorities of trying to “take control of FIFA,” once again he implied that it was because the US lost out to Qatar in a bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
And once again, he poured scorn on the ethics committee’s decision to ban him and Michel Platini and insisted they were entirely innocent of all charges over a ‘disloyal payment’ of SFr2 million which Blatter authorised to the UEFA president in 2011. Both men claimed the payment was in recognition of a verbal contract for work Platini had undertaken for FIFA between 1999 and 2002.
“This is the truth, about these two million. Did he have the right to claim these millions? Did I have the duty to pay them?” asked Blatter. “Yes, because it was a debt! If you pay a debt, there is no reason to make a global deal out of it. Michel Platini is innocent, as I am innocent. There’s nothing there. I said to the board: it is not a matter of ethics but a matter of accountability.”
Bemoaning the fact that he has been left defenceless, Blatter, who will be conspicuous by his absence at next Friday’s election unless he is either cleared or defies his ban, added: “The departure that is being prepared for me is so sad. There are situations against which one has no way of defending oneself, and all of a sudden, you are left with no friends.”
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