Feud with FIFA boss Infantino
Blatter scares DFB against “autocratic autocrats”.
02/14/2023, 12:11 p.m
FIFA boss Gianni Infantino has a bitter opponent: his predecessor Joseph Blatter. The 86-year-old does not leave a good hair about his work at the World Football Association. Blatter criticized Infantino for being “autocratic” – and also called on the DFB to do something about it.
Former FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter is calling for stronger opposition to world association boss Gianni Infantino and has also made the German Football Association (DFB) responsible. It is important “that the people in authority think about what is going to happen to the new president, who has a very autocratic, autocratic leadership style,” said the 86-year-old to the news portal t-online.
Blatter, during whose time at the top of FIFA (1998 to 2016) an unprecedented corruption network had emerged, criticized: Nobody from football is standing up and standing up against Infantino in the next election. Without a competitor at the FIFA Congress on March 16 in Kigali/Rwanda, Infantino’s re-election is considered certain. There the second of a maximum of three permitted terms of office would begin for the Swiss.
Blatter also expects more from the DFB, whose president Bernd Neuendorf is to be elected as the European representative on the council of the world association. “When the DFB speaks, it is heard,” said the former FIFA boss, emphasizing that the German association “in a communique announced shortly before the World Cup that it would not support Infantino in the election. The English association also has an important voice”.
According to the former boss, FIFA needs a new management style. A new president is needed for that. Blatter again made serious accusations against Infantino: “First and foremost, it’s all about money for him, and he always wants to make more of it. But football isn’t just about money.” He knows from FIFA employees that Infantino is rarely at the headquarters in Zurich, but “only talks to heads of state and government”. The aversion to his successor runs deep, for years the two have spoken at most about their lawyers: “Infantino is simply a disrespectful person,” said Blatter.