Sunday 29 May 2011

Sepp Blatter cleared, set to be re-elected president

Blatter is the only candidate in next week's presidential election following rival Mohamed bin Hammam's withdrawal from the race overnight.
Bin Hammam, the president of the Asian Football Confederation and Blatter, along with Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, will appear before the Fifa ethics committee later today. Bin Hammam and Warner face bribery allegations while Blatter is charged with knowing about alleged bribery.
But retiring executive committee member Beckenbauer told Radio Five Live's Sportsweek programme: "He (Blatter) did a wonderful job. It's not easy. Fifa is like the United Nations - we have 208 members.
"It's not an easy to handle, but I think Blatter and his staff are doing a wonderful job."
The German admitted, though, the allegations were very damaging for the game.

Sepp Blatter was cleared of any wrongdoing in soccer's bribery investigation on Sunday and is poised to be re-elected for a fourth term. Mohamed Bin Hammam, due to stand against Blatter until he withdrew from the presidential race in the early hours of Sunday warning, and CONCACAF president Jack Warner were provisionally suspended pending a further investigation. FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke confirmed that the election would go ahead on Wednesday with Blatter standing unopposed. "The committee concluded that the implicated officials must be temporarily excluded from active participation in football activies," ethics committee deputy chairman Petrus Damaseb told reporters. The allegations concerned a meeting of the Caribbean Football Union in May 10-11 in Port of Spain, attended by Warner and Bin Hammam and Caribbean soccer officials. "Some individuals alleged that money was paid as an inducement to support Mr Bin Hammam's candidacy, facilitated by Jack Warner," said Damaseb. Blatter was interrogated at Bin Hammam's request because he may have known about payments, FIFA said, but Damaseb said nothing wrong had been found.

Former International Olympic Committee vice-president Dick Pound helped clean up the organisation following the Salt Lake City scandal, when officials were allegedly bribed to give the 2002 Winter Olympics to the city.
And the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency feels national associations could leave Fifa and set up their own governing body.
"It may be if Fifa is not going to do the game any good, the game may have to do something to Fifa," he said.
"You could withdraw from Fifa, for example. You could say 'we're not satisfied that the organisation is being properly run and it's not a credit to the sport that we know and love and therefore let's have an alternative to Fifa'.
"That's one possibility - it has been done in other sports. They say 'we're the effective governing body of football now and not Fifa'."
Pound insists Fifa need to conduct a thorough investigation into the corruption claims if their reputation is to recover from the battering it has taken in recent weeks.
"There are so many allegations of corruption and foul play and so forth around the activities of Fifa itself and in some of its recent selections for its events," he said.
"If there's that much smoke there may be some fire and I should have thought that it's not good for Fifa's reputation nor for the reputation of anybody involved for these things to be flying around without somebody saying 'let's take a look at them and see if there is a problem and if there is a problem what do we do about it?.

Blatter replaced Joao Havelange as Fifa president in 1998, but has come under scrutiny in recent weeks. Fifa's ethics committee opened an investigation into the Swiss chief earlier this week because of his knowledge of an alleged bribery scandal, which also involves Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam and Concacaf supremo Jack Warner.

"He [Blatter] has done a wonderful job so far,” Beckenbauer was quoted as saying by Radio Five Live. “It's not easy. Fifa is like the United Nations - we have 208 members. It's not an easy job to handle, but I think Blatter and his staff are doing a wonderful job.”

He added: “The recent allegations were very damaging for the game, though. It's a disaster for football and I hope when June 1 comes and the election will be over, then all the discussion about corruption is finished and Fifa can go back to normal."

Blatter is the only candidate left for the Fifa presidential elections on June 1 following the withdrawal of Bin Hammam this weekend.

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