Defiant Blatter vows comeback

FIFA SCANDAL Swiss head disgraced after the ethics committee bans him from all football activities

ZURICH: He was introduced as “the elected president of Fifa” but the Sepp Blatter who sat in front of reporters on Monday, shortly after receiving an eight-year ban from soccer, appeared very different to the confident man who had led the sport’s global governing body for 17 years.

Blatter looked pale and frail, unusually unshaven and with a plaster below his right eye; the tribulations of the past months, which had seen him suspended pending a Fifa ethics investigation and placed under criminal investigation in his homeland, seemed to have taken their toll on the 79-yearold Swiss. His message contained some defiance: he vowed to fight the ban. He even ended the press conference, held symbolically at Fifa’s old headquarters, with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s old line: “I’ll be back.”

But, that touch of toughness aside, his tone was more one of hurt, self-pity and incomprehension. After a rambling introduction, with a reference to late South African leader Nelson Mandela, he began a statement that sounded initially like an apology but ended as something very different.

“I’m really sorry. I’m sorry. I am sorry that I am still somewhere a punching ball. I’m sorry that I’m, as president of Fifa, this punching ball. I’m sorry for football,” he said.

Blatter, who spent a week in hospital in November, after which he said he had been close to death, sat with his daughter Corinne throughout the media conference. His spokesman said the sticking plaster covered the scar of a minor cosmetic operation.

NO RIGHT

As for the Ethics Committee, Blatter said they had overstepped their remit.

“This committee has no right to go against the president,” he said, even though Fifa’s Ethics Code makes no exemption for its leader. Fifa’s members will, however, elect another president on Feb 26 at a congress that Blatter noted he will not even be able to attend, unless his appeal succeeds.