Sepp Blatter resigned as FIFA president on Tuesday, four days after being re-elected to a fifth term. Blatter, 79, announced the decision at a news conference in Zurich, six days after the FBI raided a hotel in Zurich and arrested several FIFA officials. http://news.yahoo.com/fifa-president-sepp-blatter-says-quit-164628917--sow.html
He is in office until a special election is held - likely at the end of the year. This gives him a chance to try to get one of his guys into office. So basically win the election, and keep control for another 6 months, and have a better chance to control who takes over.
Guessing it was one of two phone calls. 1. A phone call from Adidas saying they found another place to spend their money. 2. A phone call from the US DOJ saying they found another e-mail.
Exactly. And why the need to wait for a special congress? There was a clear 2nd-place candidate who should be named president now.
Because he was the only one that bothered to run against Blatter. He was 2nd place in a 2 man race. With Blatter gone a lot more people will likely step forward.
This makes sense. Most opinions were this election was always going to be more of a coronation formality than a democratic process. Now that King Sepp (who would keep the status quo) has abdicated the throne, we can hope to see candidates with opposing platforms debating the direction of a new FIFA. Blatter's crime may not have been a direct involvement with corruption, bribes and lack of transparency, but his complacency towards keeping a broken system insured these crimes would continually get worse. His support of twisting an independent investigation to justify FIFA's actions, along with his recent comment suggesting the US criminal investigation was the revenge of a sore loser in the World Cup 2022 bid makes him culpable. Both of those actions are the typical psyche of someone who understands he owed his title to those who made FIFA a collection of extortionists.
Because he is still the sitting head of the organization, he will have input on who takes over. That can be a big problem, but hopefully cooler heads will prevail.
It all depends on who ends up replacing him. I won't get excited till we know who the new president of FIFA is.
