Sepp Blatter, again the President of FIFA
Despite all the controversies, the actual President of Fifa, Sepp Blatter, was won a new mandate, the fourth one as a leader of the international forum. The new election was a very contested and several voices asked for the elections to be postponed. More, Prince William backed up the Football Association and The Scottish Football Federation’s point of view. The two groups suggested that the elections should be postponed because of the several corruption cases that took place before. His single contestant was Mohammed bin Hammam, but he was suspended. This is the reason why Blatter is the only candidate in this moment. The corruption scandal took place before the election and was about the two adversaries of Blatter that were both suspended. The postponing of these election happens if 150 nations from all 208 votes for that. The analysts think that in this moment is less probably something like that to happen.
The ceremony took place at the 61th Congress of FIFA and the result was a well known one. All the affiliated federation gave a confidence vote for Blatter. The first thing that the official said was „Thank you all for your trust”. He will be leading FIFA for four more years. The English Federation was the only one that tried to postpone everything, especially because the Swiss official of 75 years old was the only candidate, but the proposal had only 17 pro and 172 votes against. The most important reporter of the sport investigations, Andrew Jennings, wrote in his book about the „secret world” of FIFA about the first time that the actual President was elected. He noted that in June 8, 1998, the candidates were the Swedish Lennart Johansson, the actual President at that time, and Blatter, that was seen as the discovery of Horst Dassler, the Adidas’s inventor.
Jennings wrote about the breakfast from that morning, a very restless one, because a lot of people were there with white envelopes in their hands. In one hour, the African officials suddenly changed their option and decided not to support Johansson anymore, even though, with one night before the election, they said very firm their position. The vote result was Blatter 118 - Johansson 80. From that moment, Blatter is running FIFA, even though the corruptions scandals are far to be finished. In 1981, he was General Secretary of FIFA and a close friend to the President from that time, Joao Havelange, the man that taught him everything. Step by step, Blatter made steps forward to the biggest function of FIFA and it seems that his time is not over.
