Platini pleas to determined Blatter to step down as Ali campaign gains momentum

2015/5/29 11:21:33

The world of professional soccer has been through the most explosive time in its history as a combined US-Swiss investigation led to the arrests and indictments of several top FIFA officials with allegations of more than $150 million in bribes. President Sepp Blatter has not been implicated thus far but he is under immense pressure to abandon his bid for re-election in favor of Jordanian Prince Ali. The scandal was major news in the UK with front pages like this one from the Sun.


From the Inside the Games website, David Owen reports from the Hallenstadion in Zurich, Thursday, 28 May 2015:

 

Michel Platini today looked Sepp Blatter in the eye and urged him to resign, amid signs that this week’s dramatic arrests and detailed corruption allegations are helping the campaign of Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein, Blatter’s only rival for the FIFA Presidency, to gain a certain amount of traction.

 

An emotional UEFA President explained his plea - made at a meeting involving other confederation Presidents at 11am, shortly after his arrival in Zurich from Warsaw - by saying:

 

“I have affection for Mr Blatter.

 

“I think it is a quality of a friend to tell a friend what the true position is.

 

“He always said he was an uncle to me or something like that.

 

“If I hadn’t said it to him, nobody would…

 

“It was my duty to do it.”

 

As Platini also made clear, the 79-year-old incumbent, who is seeking a fifth term in a post he has occupied since 1998, rejected his advice, saying, “I cannot leave when Congress starts in the morning.”

 

Nor was there any suggestion that Blatter is ready to walk away in the speech he delivered to the Congress’s Opening ceremony, attended by International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach and other dignitaries, at Theater 11 early on Thursday evening.

 

In serious, determined tones, the FIFA President acknowledged that “the events of yesterday” had “cast a long shadow over football”, while asserting to his audience: “We cannot allow the reputation of FIFA to be dragged through the mud”.

 

Blatter said that it fell to him to “find a way forward to fix things.”


For complete text of the latest article and other related to the subject, link below:

http://www.insidethegames.biz/article ... i-campaign-gains-momentum

 

Photo of front page courtesy of Sun

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