Sepp Blatter confirms he will stand for a fifth term as FIFA president

Sepp Blatter will stand for re-election as FIFA president next year, he confirmed on Monday. The 78-year-old Swiss, who was first elected in 1998, confirmed his candidature for a fifth term in a recorded interview transmitted to delegates at the Soccerex Global Convention in Manchester, northwest England. Blatter said: “You see a mission is never finished. And my mission is not finished. I will make an official declaration definitely in September [to stand] … when we have the executive committee.”

At the last [FIFA] congress in Sao Paulo, I got a huge majority of national associations asking ‘Please go on, be our president also in future.’

Sepp Blatter announces he will stand for a fifth term as FIFA president

Last month, Frenchman Michel Platini, 59, revealed he would not challenge Blatter to become the most powerful man in world football. Instead, he will seek another term as the president of European football’s ruling body, UEFA. The only other declared candidate is former FIFA Deputy Secretary-General Jerome Champagne, 56, although the candidacy deadline is not until January 2015. Before this year’s World Cup, five of FIFA’s six confederations—the exception being UEFA—gave Blatter their support to continue as president and he now looks very likely to be re-elected at the FIFA Congress in Zurich next June. If re-elected, Blatter will have to deal with the controversies regarding the World Cups in Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022.

Yes, I will be ready—I will be a candidate.

Sepp Blatter’s message to the Soccerex Global Convention

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