Exclusive: By Osasu Obayiuwana
March 14 – FIFA president Sepp Blatter has admitted that public criticism of its ongoing governance reform progress, especially by key officials at the heart of it, could put the credibility of the entire process at great risk.
Pieth said they are frustrating his plans to institute a set of meaningful reforms that can restore public credibility to world football’s governing body, following the tainted process for selecting the 2018/2022 World Cup hosts.
FIFA’s reputation was also severely damaged by revelations that millions of dollars, in bribes, were paid by ISL, the defunct sports marketing company, to certain members of its executive committee, including Ricardo Texeira, the former president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), in order to secure lucrative broadcast contracts.
Blatter told InsideWorldFootball, in an exclusive interview, in Marrakech, Morocco, that he had recently spoken with Pieth and asked that he make no further public comments on the process.
“Yes I am surprised with his (Pieth’s) reaction. I spoke with him [on Friday].”
“He was asked to make proposals. He was designated by me, and confirmed by the [FIFA] executive committee, to be the chair of what we described, at the time, as the committee for solutions.
“He is to propose solutions. But he thought, or the people around him thought, that all of the solutions that they propose have to be implemented. This is not possible.
“We have to look at them, we have to discuss them and then we will see what will be accepted, or not, by the congress.
“If he is to make criticisms, I have told him that he should not go public, because he is a part of the reform process.
“If everybody in the reform process goes public and says that they are not happy with this and that, there will be a lot of confusion. We have to avoid that.
“He has now accepted that he would not go public [with his complaints], unless I tell him that he can go public,” Blatter told this reporter.
Blatter claims the continued opposition of UEFA, European football’s governing body and particularly its president, Michel Platini, to several parts of the reform process does not bother him, as he is confident that individual European national associations will support them, at the forthcoming FIFA congress in Mauritius.
“The authority of FIFA is only being challenged by one Confederation and not by the others… This is not new. This started on the 8th or 9th of June 1998, in Paris.
“When I speak with national associations involved in this process, because several European national associations have been involved in the three task forces that we have set up, they are in support of the reforms.
“But there is an impression that Europe (UEFA) would have liked to carry out these reforms by themselves and not give the opportunity to the FIFA president and the rest of the world to make them.
“The important points of the reforms will go through, because the congress decided, in 2011, that we shall carry out these reforms. They confirmed this, with a huge majority, in 2012, so they cannot end this process in 2013. It’s not possible.”
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