Blatter expected to run for fifth term

My mission is not finished yet, says FIFA president.

ZURICH:

Fifa President Sepp Blatter on Friday strengthened expectations that he will soon announce his bid for a fifth term as the head of global football.

“I want to do this, because things aren’t over yet,” the 78-year-old was quoted as saying by Blick. “My mandate is running out, but my mission is not finished.”

Blatter is widely expected to announce his formal candidacy at the Fifa Congress, before the World Cup, in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo.

In response to the new reports, Fifa stressed that Blatter’s plan was still to ask the 209 national associations in world body at the congress whether they want him to run again.

The election will be held in 2015.

Blick said Blatter’s comments came in response to questions about his future during a debate it organised in Zurich.

Blatter has been Fifa’s president since 1998. He joined football’s governing body in 1975 and was its secretary general before succeeding Brazilian Joao Havelange as president.

Blatter has previously been guarded about his plans for a new term.

In February, he told Swiss public broadcaster RTS that he ‘wouldn’t say no’ to a new mandate.

“If I’m in good health, and I currently am, I don’t see why I should stop work, and especially the job of consolidating Fifa,” he said then.

The only candidate to have entered the race formally so far is Frenchman Jerome Champagne, a former diplomat and former secretary general of Fifa, who left the organisation in 2010.

Champagne, 55, has said that if his former boss Blatter enters the race, he will pull out.

Michel Platini, head of European governing body Uefa, who has crossed swords with Blatter over his running of Fifa, is another potential candidate.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 10^th, 2014.

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