Sepp Blatter. (Source: AP)
Joseph “Sepp” Blatter’s 17-year run as president of world football’s governing body, Fifa, has seen troughs and crests, with the Swiss coming out usually on top, but always in defiance of fate. On Monday, Blatter’s reign ended ignominiously, as the Fifa ethics committee banned him for eight years from all football-related activity for allegedly signing a contract “unfavourable” to Fifa and making a “disloyal payment” to Uefa president Michel Platini in 2011. While Blatter has mostly made enemies in Europe, European national football associations are in “shock” over the extension of the ban to French legend Platini, seen till late October as Blatter’s successor in Fifa.
An eight-year ban certainly ends the career of Blatter (79) and effectively that of Platini (60). But this “death sentence” notwithstanding, the entire non-European footballing world remains loyal to Blatter and he would likely win an election even today. Platini, on the other hand, has done a very commendable job as Uefa president by all accounts. His exit is seen as a blow to any prospective long-term reformation of Fifa. Plagued by corruption scandals, Fifa’s nadir was the arrest of several officials from a Zurich hotel in May and the subsequent charges brought by US authorities against 39 football officials and sport executives. How acute the crisis is can only be imagined by such facts as the Brazilian football federation’s current chairman and his two predecessors all being under arrest.
Blatter and Platini are appealing against the ban. But Blatter must dissociate himself from Fifa completely. He must recognise that this is as far as he can go in the interest of world football. Every major decision of Fifa in the last 25 years is under suspicion. It can’t heal itself unless the Blatter sub- and super-structures are overhauled and remade.
Source: New feed
