Blatter upset Infantino did not show him respect

LONDON: Disgraced former FIFA president Sepp Blatter accused his successor Gianni Infantino of showing a lack of respect for him in an interview with BBC.

The 80-year-old – who on Monday lost his appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over a six year ban from football for a US$2mil (RM8.8mil) payment to then UEFA boss Michel Platini – said Infantino had dropped by his house once since he was elected in February and Blatter had raised matters he thought should be dealt with.

“I am definitely not a happy man (with) what happened with FIFA,” Blatter told the BBC.

“I have never seen in any company that the new president ... was not paying respect to the old president.

“After his election we had a very good contact and he stopped at my house and we had a chat. I told him I have a list of questions that should be solved in FIFA which has not been solved before.

“(Infantino) said ‘I will work on that’ and he never came back.”

Blatter said Infantino, who was UEFA secretary-general under Platini, had not returned his phone calls since that meeting.

Blatter, who served as FIFA president for 18 years but was subject to withering criticism during his tenure, claims he is too trusting and as a result he and his team never expected the FBI investigation that exposed massive corruption involving senior FIFA members.

The Swiss, who served as the faithful secretary-general under his similarly disgraced predecessor the late Joao Havelange, also claims he came perilously close to death late last year.

An unusually dishevelled and unshaven Blatter had alluded to this when he held a press conference last December.

“It was Nov 1, 2015. I was at the cemetery in my home village – where we have a family grave. And I was there ... very, very weak, I couldn’t move,” he said.