Blatter reckons it’s business as usual

DEPOSED FIFA president Sepp Blatter intends to stay in office until February — the likeliest date for the governing body’s next election — despite tendering his resignation on Tuesday.

Hours after his bombshell decision to quit, having served 17 years at the helm, Blatter was back at FIFA House to address the staff.

The emotional Swiss told around 400 FIFA personnel in Zurich: ‘We’re in a crisis. I need all your help to get out of the crisis. Stay strong, we’ve got a lot of work to do.’

Blatter received a standing ovation from the faithful said to have lasted 10 minutes as he entered the packed auditorium.

He was at his desk by 6.30am yesterday with a full programme of meetings and queues outside his office — as if nothing had changed.

But FA chairman Greg Dyke believes Blatter’s ambition to stay in charge until a successor is elected is ‘fantasy’, adding: ‘Anyone who has left a big organisation knows the day you say you’re leaving, you’ve gone.’

RAFA BENITEZ, the new Real Madrid manager, must soon decide whether to relocate his family from their beloved Caldy hillside home on the Wirral peninsula, where they have remained since the Spaniard (right) left Liverpool five years ago, even when he landed his last job at Napoli. Benitez’s wife Montse comes from Madrid but she is now a pillar of the Caldy community and their two teenage daughters are very settled there. FA CHAIRMAN Greg Dyke has led the praise for the role played by the British media in Sepp Blatter’s demise, with even the FIFA president’s inner circle admitting our press were highly influential in his departure.

Dyke said: ‘Blatter has slagged off the British media week after week , month after month, and now they have finally been proved right. Speaking as an old media man myself, it has been a triumph for British journalism.’ Sportsmail first campaigned in 2002 to get rid of Blatter and 13 years later it has finally happened.

THE most fanciful of the early candidates for the FIFA presidency was David Ginola, who failed to get the necessary five nominations from voting countries when he put himself forward in January for the last election as part of a Paddy Power publicity stunt that earned him £250,000. However, the former Newcastle and France winger’s camp say he learned a lot from the FIFA experience and will be campaigning next time as a privately funded contender with a proper manifesto for change and no betting company involvement. Some of us will need more convincing.