The FIFA president, who was overthrown in 2015, is publishing his next book. The 88-year-old from Valais is wounded in his soul and has an undiminished desire for justification. Visit a bizarre opening.
Sepp Blatter 2022, on a train ride from Zurich to Landquart.
Andrea Zahler / AZM
He is 88 years old and is no longer the emcee he once was, but still a phenomenon. The Daily Telegraph asks him to speak, a Danish film crew wants to know how close Greenland once was to being accepted into the global football family; Local television invites you to talk, as does local radio.
Joseph Blatter, president of the world football association Fifa from 1998 to 2015, holds court at a location near Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse. Another book is published. It is titled “Overtime” and promises the “true story”. Blatter looks back less on his time at the top of FIFA and more on what followed his fall in 2015.
Legal proceedings, accusations, defense, subpoenas, legal fees, debates, time for leisure, Valais and nuclear family, moments of reflection – and health setbacks. The collapse in November 2015, the artificial coma and the time in the intensive care unit at the end of 2020. But the tough Blatter has come back, like so often in his life.
Blatter is converting from a striker to a defender
The Upper Valais native was a football striker when he was young, and as an official he retreated to midfield to “direct the game,” as he says. And at the end of his life he becomes a defender of himself.
The public created by the book takes him, among other things, to the Zürichberg, in front of the FIFA headquarters, also called the “Palace”, for a photo session. The national flags are still blowing in the wind there, but otherwise the doors are closed, says Blatter, especially for him, who has now been ostracized by FIFA.
He sends an invitation to the book launch, and the old, mostly male and white-haired guard doesn’t stay away. The room is full, the temperature is rising. Blatter explains himself, as he has done so many times. For example, on the occasion of the New Year’s reception that he organized high above Zurich during FIFA times. What a difference to Fifa boss and Blatter’s successor Gianni Infantino, who seems to make little effort about his image in this country and only explains himself sparingly. If any.
Abysses are opening up between FIFA and Blatter. Or better: between the two Upper Valaisians Blatter and Infantino. It’s polar cold there. This becomes clear when, at the end of the book launch, Corinne Blatter is asked what she wishes for her father. She says to him in emphatic words: “You have to realize that today’s FIFA will never reach out to you – never, never, never.” It sounds like she wants to hammer the word “never” into her father’s head.
Whitewashing goes a long way
In the book, Blatter works too hard on Infantino. The sting runs deep. According to reports, lawyers examined some passages of text. In this worldview, Infantino is the bad guy, Blatter is the good guy, the outcast one. But the whitewashing goes a long way, in the book and in the votes at the opening. What remains remarkable is that the judiciary will not be held responsible for the person who worked for FIFA for over 40 years and traveled to 207 countries.
In the wake of his fall from the FIFA throne, some dates were burned into Blatter’s memory. He describes July 8, 2022 as “the big turning point”. At that time, he and former UEFA President Michel Platini were acquitted by the Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona. It was about a dubious million-dollar payment from Blatter to Platini from earlier days, which broke both careers because of the bans imposed by the sports judiciary. However, nothing remains justiciable.
Acquittal before the Federal Criminal Court 2022: Joseph Blatter next to his lawyer Lorenz Erni.
Alessandro Crinari / Keystone
Blatter is like Teflon. He enjoys the home game of the book launch. In the foreword to the book and on the podium, the former Federal Councilor Ueli Maurer praises the long-time FIFA conductor to the skies and practices the register that he has particularly cultivated since his resignation in 2022: that of media scolding. “All the media copy each other, only in one direction, and make everything bad,” says Maurer.
Clapping in the audience. It’s that simple: ignore all sorts of things, take sides – and beat up the media.
It is remarkable how the need for justification leads to even questionable things being pushed away. The fact that the FIFA leadership has secured millions in bonuses for years can be described as a “betrayal of football”. But maybe she was just being clever in the very rich Fifa self-service store. The Blatter book says that the question of bonuses is now unnecessary.
I’m sorry, what?
In December 2010, FIFA President Blatter, Secretary General Jérôme Valcke and CFO Markus Kattner held out millions in payments to each other, all legally because they were secured by mutual signatures. People still talk about the “Valcke system” today. Blatter received 11 million Swiss francs, Valcke 9 and Kattner 3. These were the bonuses for the World Cup in South Africa. Just like that. Further payments of millions followed later.
The long-time Secretary General Jérôme Valcke (right) installed the “Valcke System” at Fifa – it was about million-dollar bonuses in connection with the World Cup.
Jamie Squire / Getty
Of course, the Blatter fan base won’t be talking about that in 2024. In 2016, Blatter told “NZZ am Sonntag” about the World Cup bonuses: “I took the company from zero to I don’t know where. In addition, the numbers are misleading. There is no style in the way it was published.” In 2019, in a one-on-one interview with the NZZ, he answered the why question with quiet words: “I shouldn’t have taken the money.” Valcke constructed cleverly, Blatter helped. FIFA’s cast of officials felt untouchable. And money was and is available in huge quantities. Help yourself.
Obviously not everything was done “just for football”, as Blatter used to say in the Valais idiom. Platini also knows the supposed feeling of inviolability, although in the end the only option left for the sometimes overwhelmed judiciary was acquittal.
Blatter is left with late satisfaction
The World Cup bonuses and the fact that patron Blatter skillfully navigated the corruption-riddled Fifa system, which has branches all over the world, do not change the fact that the Valais native has received a nice piece of satisfaction. And this after the last few years had been like “one long torture,” which could have “broken him,” as he writes in the book.
But now it’s time for homage. Bricklayer floats. Swiss Ski President Urs Lehmann says into the microphone that Blatter is “perhaps the greatest sports official we have ever had”. The 85-year-old Erich Vogel, the gray eminence of Swiss football, speaks to Blatter about the “Machiavelli of the 21st century”, about corrupt conditions and corrupt people in FIFA and about the fact that “you got out of there unscathed”. Unhurt?
In 2015, a comedian gained access to a FIFA media conference in Zurich and covered the then FIFA boss with banknotes.
Philipp Schmidli / Getty
On the podium, media man Roger Schawinski called Blatter a “man-catcher who lured media professionals in with Valais white wine and a World Cup ball.” In addition to superlatives (“senior ballerina of power”, “world arena presenter”, “Kaiser Sepp”), Zurich city councilor Filippo Leutenegger sprinkles in shades of gray by calling it “Fifa collateral damage”.
Not everything is just over and forgotten. Not even in the midst of the somewhat old-looking fan base.