December 9 – It is common knowledge that Sepp Blatter and his successor Gianni Infantino were not exactly bosom buddies. But now the ex-FIFA president has laid bare the tensions that pervade their relationship by accusing Infantino of a lack of respect by not returning phone calls.
This week Blatter lost his final chance to clear his name when his appeal against his six-year ban from football failed at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
But he has lost none of his ability to speak his mind and in a wide-ranging interview with the BBC said he was “definitely not a happy man [with] what happened with FIFA.”
Blatter was forced to step down when the bribery scandal involving several of those under his watch started to close in but says the man who has taken over from him has all but cast him aside.
“I have never seen in any company that the new president… was not playing respect to the old president,” said Blatter
“After his election we had a very good contact and he stopped at my house and we had a chat. I told him I have a list of questions that should be solved in Fifa which has not been solved before.
“I have asked him, I have sent him a letter and I have his personal number and I was told that it’s still correct. Never never an answer – never.
“I still have this list, so now we speak only with lawyers.”
Blatter also provided for the first time details of the “small breakdown” he suffered in late 2015 – just weeks after he was suspended by FIFA.
“It was 1 November 2015. I was at the cemetery in my home village – where we have a family grave. And I was there… very, very weak, I couldn’t move. They brought me immediately to a hospital in Zurich and they thought I was going to die in the next hours. Seriously.
“It was a lady doctor there and she [asked] me: ‘Who should I phone?’ And I said: ‘No, no, no, I will go home tonight.’ And she said: ‘Oh no.’
“They brought another doctor and he said: ‘OK calm down, calm down.’ I had time enough in the hospital to think that life is [more] than only football.”
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