Sepp Blatter

• 1. Introduction

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  Sepp Blatter ran world football for seventeen years, and by the time he left, he had been banned, investigated by two countries, and accused of everything from bribery to sexual assault. Born Josef Blatter on the 10th of March 1936 in Visp, a small town in the Swiss canton of Valais, he would eventually transform FIFA from a modest organization into a global commercial enterprise. But the same ambition that built that machine would also corrode it from the inside. How did a public relations officer from a Swiss canton end up at the center of one of the biggest corruption scandals in sports history? And why, even after being pushed out, did he keep talking?

• 2. The Long Climb

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  Blatter studied in Saint Maurice before earning a degree in business and economics from the University of Lausanne in 1959. That training in commerce and presentation shaped everything that followed. He served as head of public relations for the tourist board of his home canton of Valais and as general secretary of the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation. He was also Director of Sports Timing and Relations for Longines S.A., a role that drew him into the organization of the 1972 and 1976 Olympic Games. Those experiences gave him a feel for international event logistics at a scale most sports administrators never encountered.

  Blatter joined FIFA in 1975, starting as technical director before becoming general secretary in 1981. That year also brought personal change: he altered the spelling of his first name from Josef to Joseph and later adopted his well-known nickname, Sepp, as his middle name. In 1981 he also married Barbara Käser, whose father Helmut Käser was Blatter's own predecessor as FIFA's secretary general. The marriage lasted ten years until Barbara died from complications after an operation. His predecessor in the president's chair, João Havelange, had led FIFA since 1974, and it was from Havelange that Blatter learned the core strategy of building loyalty by expanding the influence of African and Asian member associations.

• 3. Winning and Keeping Power

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  The 51st FIFA Congress was held on the 8th of June 1998, and Blatter defeated UEFA president Lennart Johansson to become FIFA's eighth president. The election was immediately contested. Farra Ado, vice-president of the Confederation of African Football and president of the Somali Football Federation, later claimed in the British press to have been offered $100,000 to vote for Blatter in that 1998 race. Those claims appeared in print during the 2002 campaign, a contest already clouded by allegations of financial irregularities and backroom dealings.

  Blatter was re-elected in 2002, then again unopposed on the 31st of May 2007, when only 66 of 207 FIFA member associations had even nominated him. In 2011, his only declared challenger, Mohammed bin Hammam of Qatar, withdrew on the 28th of May just before the vote was held. Bin Hammam had supported Blatter in both 1998 and 2002 but admitted he had since fallen out with Blatter over matters within the FIFA Executive Committee. With no other candidate standing, Blatter won the fourth-term election at the 61st FIFA Congress in Zurich with 186 of the 203 votes cast. Despite having said during that campaign that he would not seek another term, he ran for a fifth consecutive term in 2015.

• 4. Controversy as a Constant

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  A 2004 interview in the Swiss newspaper Sonntagsblick generated lasting damage to Blatter's reputation. Asked how to raise the popularity of women's football, he suggested that female players wear "tighter shorts" and described them as "pretty." The comments drew heated responses across the sport. That was one entry in a long catalogue of remarks that drew sustained criticism from players, officials, and the media.

  At the 2014 FIFA World Cup, Blatter interrupted a one-minute silence for former South African president Nelson Mandela, who had died the previous day, after only eleven seconds. Michael van Praag, chairman of the Royal Dutch Football Association, called the behavior "preposterous" and openly hoped Blatter would not be re-elected in 2015. The criticism came on top of years of public heckling: Blatter had been booed at the World Cup in Seoul, at the Confederations Cup in Frankfurt, at home in Visp in 2011, at the 2012 Women's Olympic Football Final Medal Ceremony, and at a Confederations Cup match in 2013. By 2014, organizers had decided that no speeches would be given at the World Cup opening to head off further protest.

  In 2007 and 2008, Blatter pushed to restrict European club teams to five foreign players, requiring at least six players of the club's own nationality. He frequently singled out the English Premier League as an example of what he saw as a problem with foreign dominance. The European Union pushed back on the plan as incompatible with EU employment law.

• 5. Money and the World Cup Machine

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  FIFA's finances during the Blatter era were both the source of his authority and the source of his undoing. The collapse of FIFA's marketing partner ISL in 2001 became a focal point. FIFA's then secretary-general Michel Zen-Ruffinen, once Blatter's deputy and protégé, compiled a 30-page dossier alleging financial mismanagement. It claimed the ISL collapse had led to losses of up to 100 million US dollars under Blatter's management. Blatter shut down the internal investigation into the matter after members broke confidentiality agreements and removed Zen-Ruffinen from his post just before the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

  A Council of Europe report published in April 2012 stated it would be "difficult to imagine" that Blatter had been unaware of significant payments made by ISSM/ISL to unnamed FIFA officials in connection with World Cup television rights. On the 29th of April 2013, FIFA's Ethics Committee cleared Blatter of misconduct but found that his predecessor João Havelange, along with former FIFA Executive Committee members Ricardo Teixeira and Nicolás Leoz, had accepted illegal payments between 1992 and May 2000. Havelange resigned as FIFA's honorary president over the findings. Leoz, then 84 years old, had already resigned as president of the South American Football Confederation a week earlier, citing health reasons.

  The 2022 World Cup bid process brought the Qatar question to a head. Reports indicated that Blatter had struck an informal deal with UEFA head Michel Platini to steer the 2018 World Cup to Europe in exchange for support, with non-European bidders for 2018 warned they risked being frozen out of future competitions if they stayed in the running. Eleven bids covering thirteen nations had been submitted in March 2009. Five bids were exclusively for 2022, while others covered both tournaments. Russia took 2018 and Qatar took 2022, a result Blatter would later call a mistake.

• 6. The Fall

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  On the 2nd of June 2015, just six days after the United States government indicted several current and former FIFA officials and sports marketing companies on charges of bribery and money laundering, Blatter called a press conference at FIFA's Zurich headquarters. He said: "My mandate does not appear to be supported by everybody," and announced his resignation. He added: "While I have a mandate from the membership of FIFA, I do not feel that I have a mandate from the entire world of football."

  By the 26th of June, Blatter was already suggesting he had not formally resigned but had instead "put my mandate in the hands of an extraordinary congress." On the 25th of September, Swiss investigators announced they were looking into payments Blatter had made to UEFA president Michel Platini. Major FIFA sponsors Coca-Cola, Visa Inc., McDonald's, and Budweiser issued public statements calling on him to resign. On the 8th of October, he was suspended from FIFA for 90 days.

  On the 21st of December, FIFA's Ethics Committee banned both Blatter and Platini from football for eight years. A FIFA appeals committee in February 2016 reduced the ban to six years. Issa Hayatou served as acting FIFA president until the extraordinary congress in late February 2016, at which Gianni Infantino was elected the ninth president. On the 24th of March 2021, Blatter received a second six-year ban and was fined CHF 1,000,000 by the Ethics Committee after a probe into massive bonus payments. On the 2nd of November 2021, Swiss authorities formally charged him with fraud and falsifying documents over the Platini payments. Blatter and Platini were acquitted, the verdict was appealed, and they were acquitted a second time in March 2025.

• 7. After the Ban

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  Blatter's suspension, which runs until 2027, has not silenced him. He has criticized FIFA president Gianni Infantino and UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin by name since leaving office. He acknowledged that he played a major role in the commercialization of football and expressed concern that the expansion of tournaments, rising costs, and fan violence could erode public interest in the sport.

  His criticism of the 2030 and 2034 World Cup processes was pointed. He objected to the 2030 World Cup being spread across six countries in three continents, naming Argentina, Morocco, Paraguay, Portugal, Spain, and Uruguay, and said the tournament would lose its identity. He argued the 2034 award to Saudi Arabia undermined the human rights and democratic values he described as part of FIFA's foundation. He also supported a boycott of the 2026 World Cup matches in the United States, citing concerns about the Trump administration's immigration policies and the treatment of protesters and migrants.

  In November 2017, American goalkeeper Hope Solo accused Blatter of sexual assault at the FIFA Ballon d'Or awards in 2013, telling the Portuguese newspaper Expresso that Blatter had grabbed her just before the two presented an award together to Abby Wambach. Blatter's spokesman Thomas Renggli called the allegation "ridiculous." The honorary degree De Montfort University had awarded Blatter in recognition of his ethical conduct was revoked in October 2015. The ban from all FIFA activities that replaced that honor remains in effect through 2027.