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Sepp Blatter Re-elected as FIFA President Sepp Blatter Re-elected as FIFA President
(35 minutes later)
ZURICH — Sepp Blatter was re-elected as FIFA’s president on Friday, emerging from a week of scandal and renewed public criticism with a fifth term as the head of soccer’s world governing body. ZURICH — The week began with Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s longtime president, acting anxious. Normally gregarious and chirping, Mr. Blatter greeted arriving members of the executive committee of world soccer’s governing body on Monday with an uncharacteristic reserve. He was, according to several officials who met with him, strangely quiet and introspective. He even talked about the possibility of losing the presidential election.
On the first ballot of FIFA’s member federations here, Mr. Blatter got 133 votes, just short of the two-thirds majority required. His challenger, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan, got 73 votes. By Wednesday, Mr. Blatter’s mood had darkened further. A dawn’s-light police raid at a luxury hotel here was at the heart of a sweeping indictment against 14 soccer officials and marketing executives who were charged with staggering levels of corruption, a development that only deepened the shade hanging over Mr. Blatter and his organization’s flagging reputation.
A second ballot would have required only a simple majority, making Prince Ali an extreme underdog, and he withdrew from the race. In the end, however, Mr. Blatter somehow finished the week with the broadest of smiles. Despite the lingering controversy and a strong campaign from a determined opponent, Mr. Blatter won a fifth straight term as FIFA president on Friday, defeating Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan. On the first ballot, Mr. Blatter received 133 votes, just short of the two-thirds majority required; Prince Ali received 73. A second ballot would have required only a simple majority, making Prince Ali a long shot, and he withdrew from the race.
The announcement of the results came after a prolonged voting period in which a member of each delegation was called to the front of the arena in alphabetical order by delegation to cast a ballot in one of two boxy white voting booths. “I want to thank, in particular, all of you who were brave enough to support me,” Prince Ali said in his concession. As he stepped away from the podium, he was greeted with a hug by Sunil Gulati, president of U.S. Soccer, who had been one of his earliest supporters.
After it concluded, the paper ballots were dumped on a table and counted by hand. The entire process took about two hours. Mr. Blatter congratulated Prince Ali for what he said was “a very good result,” then told the delegates, “I like you,” adding, “For the next four years, I will be in command of this boat called FIFA. And we will bring it back on shore.”
Mr. Blatter, one of the most powerful people in sports, has run FIFA as an autocracy since winning the presidency in 1998. He was expected to defeat Prince Ali despite the allegations of criminal behavior that have engulfed his organization this week. The vote took place only miles from the luxury hotel where several top FIFA officials were arrested Wednesday on corruption charges brought by the United States. The margin of victory was closer than expected. Although the voting was conducted in secret — each of the 209 member nations sent a delegate, one by one, to a booth to fill out a paper ballot — Mr. Blatter has long had the support of many smaller or developing countries, for whom he has delivered consistent funding. While Europe and some countries in the Americas supported Prince Ali, Mr. Blatter banked widespread support from the Asian and African confederations, who account for 100 votes. (FIFA officials said three of the ballots were spoiled.)
For years, FIFA’s membership has largely operated in lock step under Mr. Blatter as he weathered numerous controversies — corruption, bribery, match-fixing and others — and rarely showed any sign of vulnerability. In the previous two presidential races, he ran unopposed. The federal charges this week against some of his top officials were considered an international embarrassment, but hardly a threat to his power. With his victory, Mr. Blatter, 79, continues a 40-year career with FIFA; he has served as president since 1998. His accomplishments are significant; under his watch, FIFA has overseen considerable growth in soccer’s popularity and has drastically increased its commitment to women’s soccer, youth soccer and aid for developing countries through sports.
The FIFA president is elected by a one-country, one-vote poll of its 209 member federations, making the many smaller countries who support Mr. Blatter an effective counterweight to his unpopularity elsewhere, most notably in Europe. Although he has never been directly implicated, Mr. Blatter has also been at the helm of an organization dogged by scandal. The latest arrests of several top soccer officials, which took place in a raid here Wednesday on behalf of United States authorities, in combination with a separate investigation by the Swiss police into the bidding for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting rights, are just the latest in a long list of corruption allegations including money laundering, blatant conflicts of interest and outright bribery.
Mr. Blatter, who was not directly implicated in the indictment or in a separate investigation announced by Swiss authorities into the 2010 voting that awarded the next two World Cups, said in a speech before the vote Friday: “I am being held accountable for the current storm. O.K., so be it. I will shoulder it.” That reality, as well as a glaring lack of transparency, led some officials, including Mr. Gulati, to push for a reform candidate to challenge Mr. Blatter in this election. (Mr. Blatter had run unopposed in his last two elections.)
He acknowledged in a speech Thursday that these are “unprecedented and difficult times” for FIFA. But he also tried to absolve himself of blame for FIFA’s latest scandal. Initially, four candidates were nominated against Mr. Blatter: Prince Ali, Michael van Praag of the Netherlands, the former Portuguese player Luís Figo and the retired French international player David Ginola.
“We, or I, cannot monitor everyone all of the time,” he said. “If people want to do wrong, they will also try to hide it. But it must also fall to me to be responsible for the reputation of our entire organization, and to find a way to fix things.” Mr. Ginola’s campaign was largely a sham — it was backed by an online sports-betting company seeking publicity — and he withdrew early on, but it was only last week that Mr. van Praag and Mr. Figo stepped back and put their support behind Prince Ali, who campaigned on a platform committed to changing what he called a broken culture of FIFA.
Prince Ali, a brother of King Abdullah II, ran on a platform of transparency. He promised Friday “to throw open the door of FIFA house.” “We have heard, in recent days, voices which described our FIFA as an avaricious body which feeds off the game it loves,” Prince Ali said in his speech to the delegates before the election. “We have heard questions about whether our family is morally bankrupt.”
In an interview in March, he said that if he somehow unseated Mr. Blatter, he had no intention of remaining in power as long. Speaking in a measured tone, Prince Ali continued: “Friends and colleagues: If you give me your backing, we can win the right to a new beginning.”
“One term,” he said. “One term. I want to get in there, make the changes that need to be made and then get out of the way.” It was a powerful speech from Prince Ali, but the delegates were not swayed, instead choosing again to elect Mr. Blatter, who joked, “I don’t need to introduce myself to you,” in his own remarks. Mr. Blatter also repeatedly highlighted his long record with FIFA and announced that he planned to create a new department, dedicated to serving the needs of professional players and clubs, within FIFA.
Mr. Blatter promised that a new term would be his last. He made the same promise before his last election. For the first time since the arrests of several of his colleagues, Mr. Blatter also took some measure of responsibility for the persistent problems which have plagued FIFA during his reign, saying, “I will shoulder it.” He added, “I just want to fix FIFA together with you.” That rhetoric from Mr. Blatter during his speech, however, was different from his comments earlier in the day, when he largely deflected the notion that he could monitor the behavior of his colleagues around the world, telling the Congress, “You can’t just ask people to behave ethically just like that.”
Separately, FIFA avoided a controversy Friday when the head of Palestine’s soccer federation, Jibril Rajoub, withdrew a proposal to suspend Israel from world soccer. Given the floor to address the delegates, Mr. Rajoub made an impassioned speech accusing Israel of racism and imposing unfair restrictions on player movement in the region, but then said he was withdrawing the proposal at the urging of top FIFA officials. Mr. Blatter’s latest term — he has said, as he did after his last victory, that this will be a final mandate — begins beneath a substantial cloud. The two investigations, one by the United States Department of Justice and one by Swiss authorities, figure to provide even more “bad news,” as Mr. Blatter put it, in the coming weeks and months. There will be further arrests, depositions, extraditions and, perhaps, trials — all of which will extend the “current storm,” as Mr. Blatter said.
There are also continuing concerns about human-rights violations of construction workers building stadiums and other infrastructure ahead of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup as well as a territorial dispute between Israel and Palestine and an ever-worsening relationship between Mr. Blatter and UEFA, European soccer’s governing body. Michel Platini, UEFA’s president, called for Mr. Blatter to resign before the election and had said that UEFA would consider all options if Mr. Blatter won the election, including a World Cup boycott and a complete withdrawal from FIFA altogether.
“UEFA associations will meet in Berlin next week,” Mr. Platini said. “We will be open to all options.”
If UEFA does seek some sort of extreme move, it will likely be little more than another road bump for Mr. Blatter, who has endured through seemingly everything. While many in soccer’s larger community have continually clamored for a change, Mr. Blatter said that, in many ways, he feels as though his career is just beginning.
“We don’t need revolutions, but we always need evolutions,” he said, before adding: “Time is a flat circle. I am with you. Some will say a long time, some will say too long. But what is time?”
Mr. Blatter shrugged. “I say my time at FIFA has been too short.”