The world of football seems to be celebrating the announcement by FIFA President Sepp Blatter that he is going to be stepping down. Blatter was only re-elected last Friday for a fifth term in office of world football’s governing body, just a couple of days after many FIFA officials had been arrested following an investigation by the US Department of Justice.
So amidst all the scandals, FIFA have been under heavy scrutiny, and up until now, Blatter has looked untouchable and immovable. But he announced on Tuesday that he would be giving up his role and called for an extraordin FIFA congress to happen as soon as possible so that a new leader could be elected.
The next ordinary congress is set for May 13, 2016 but Blatter looks as if he doesn’t want to wait that long and the extraordinary congress could be called between December 2015 and March 2016.
It appears that charges of racketeering, money laundering and wire frauds was too much for Blatter to be riding out. FIFA are still under a separate investigation about bribes in selecting World Cup hosts, Swiss authorities looking at how the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were allocated.
So who is next in line? Well, Michel Platini, who called for Blatter to net put himself up for election seems to be delighted with the the news and he is running at a quote of 7/4 with Ladbrokes, putting him as second favorite behind Prince Ali Al-Hussein who is 5/4 and had enough support to go to the second round of voting in last week’s election, but who pulled out.
