FIFA President Sepp Blatter has opened on his plans after his retirement saying after he steps down from the office of the number one football body in the world he will be going into the business of football analysis.
Blatter who has been occupying the position since 2005 intends to analyse matches both on television and radio.
Given his longstanding aversion to technology, it is also unclear how Blatter would fare with Sky’s studio gadgetry but the 76-year-old said he planned to “live a dream he had when he was a young boy” and work in the media as a “radio commentator or reporter”.
When it was suggested he could become a Sky Sports pundit, he replied: “I would comment on the games but I would not say ‘now he passes right or left’ because everybody can see that on TV, but I would make my comments on tactics or techniques.”
Blatter was controversially re-elected unopposed in 2011 for his fifth term as president and said at the time that he would retire in 2015 but he had recently hinted he could go on. Yet in an interview with Sky Sports he insisted that he would leave Fifa at the age of 79.
Although he has had an up-and-down relationship with the UEFA President, Michel Platini, over the years, Blatter also appeared to anoint the former France international as his chosen successor. “This could be a good possibility … I am not so sure that he would be willing to go into the position as Fifa president – he has not declared officially.
“But he could, would, should be a good successor always and ever. And the successor shall go on with, I would say, the globality of football and not confine football only in a few countries.”
Blatter continued to skirt around the topic, saying that as things stood the tournament would be played in the blazing summer heat but refusing to rule out a switch at a later date – if the organisers proposed it.
The Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee conversely continues to say it is preparing for a summer tournament but will consider a switch if Fifa suggests it.
“If there should be any movement or change because you have heard declarations that it should be played at the end of the year and not in the hot season – for that we should receive from the organiser a demand or a request,” Blatter said. “It is a question mark as you say and it is a good question but I cannot give you a definite answer now.”
The Fifa president also insisted that his “roadmap” to reform and greater transparency was on track. After the storm of criticism and corruption allegations that engulfed Fifa in 2011, he said it would be finalised at its Congress in Mauritius in May.
He said, apparently without irony, that some of the topics up for debate would include “new statutes, some changes, speaking about the term of office, if there shall be an age limit, how the president shall be elected to have more consensus for a candidate and so on”.
Blatter also responded to the booing directed at him during the London Olympics when he appeared on the pitch at Wembley: “This was just a very, I would say, a small boos. Stars are always booed so I’m a star, you have to take it this way. I thought that the public in the Olympic Games, they would be a little bit better educated.”
