By Andrew Warshaw
August 22 – Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter says he is confident of winning this week’s last-ditch appeal against his ban from the game, but that if he fails, he will not allow the rest of his life to suffer unduly.
Blatter, who ran FIFA for 18 years, and the then UEFA president Michel Platini were originally handed eight-year bans by FIFA’s ethics committee in December over the infamous CHF2.2 million “disloyal payment” FIFA made, with Blatter’s blessing, to his one-time ally in 2011.
Both bans were reduced to six years by FIFA’s appeals committee in February and Platini’s cut by a further two years – to four – when he went to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in May.
But the CAS panel backed the original FIFA decision that the payment, the balance Platini was owed for consultancy work he did for Blatter between 1999-2002, was not legitimate. Both men counter that the money, which was paid shortly before Platini decided not to run against Blatter in the 2011 FIFA presidential election, was based on a verbal “gentleman’s agreement”.
Blatter, now in his 80s, is keen to clear his name even though he is still under criminal investigation in Switzerland over the transaction and other aspects of his management of FIFA.
“I’m very happy that we are coming to the end of a problem created internally by the ethics committee,” Blatter told the BBC World Service. “I’m confident I can convince the panel … that we had an oral contract. Bribery and corruption have been taken out. There is nothing there.”
Blatter said that if he loses at CAS after Thursday’s hearing, he will examine the reasons before deciding whether to go further.
“I will see whether there are facts that (impinge on) basic human rights. Whether I win or lose, my life will still go on. I am not a criminal because this is only a sporting decision and not a legal one. I am still living in the same apartment as when I was president, and paying my rent. I am hoping to have many more years of good life.”
In the interview, Blatter described his predecessor Joao Havelange, who died last week aged 100, as a “teacher” and “like a brother” but declined to comment on the darker side of Havelange’s career including being embroiled in the ISL scandal.
Havelange was president of FIFA from 1974 to 1998, replacing Englishman Sir Stanley Rous before being succeeded by Blatter, his long-standing general secretary. He also served as an International Olympic Committee member from 1963 to 2011.
Despite masterminding the expansion of the World Cup from 16 to 32 teams and turning FIFA into a global business, he will be equally remembered for overseeing a culture of greed and wielding an iron fist. He resigned as honorary president of FIFA in 2013 after the ethics committee revealed he had received bribes along with two other FIFA members, including his former son-in-law Ricardo Teixeira.
But Blatter spoke only of their close relationship. “I am very grateful to him, he was my teacher, a teacher with confidence, that is why later I was managing FIFA in the same spirit, [with] trust and confidence. It is now not the time (that) I will make some comments what was not totally proper.”
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