Concacaf boss axed over Fifa scandal

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Jeffrey Webb, one of seven officials arrested this week on corruption charges, has been provisionally dismissed from his role.

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Rio de Janeiro - Concacaf President Jeffrey Webb, who was among the seven soccer officials arrested earlier this week on corruption charges, has been provisionally dismissed from his role, the soccer confederation said on Thursday.

Senior Vice President Alfredo Hawit has been named as Webb's successor, the Confederation of North, Central America and the Caribbean Football Association (Concacaf) said in a statement.

Webb, who also served as vice-president of Fifa, was arrested in Zurich as part of the corruption scandal.

The executive committee also placed General Secretary Enrique Sanz on a leave of absence

Hawit said Concacaf are cooperating with the investigation by governmental authorities, which have not placed any restrictions on the confederation's ongoing activities.

“While we are profoundly disappointed by the allegations made by authorities that again, Concacaf has been the victim of fraud, we remain committed to Concacaf's goal to develop, promote and manage the game of soccer,” said Hawit.

“We have now taken the appropriate steps to maintain our operations and continue to deliver on our commitments to all of our constituents, including our fans, members, as well as commercial and broadcast partners.”

Reuters



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Emotional Platini says Blatter must go

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“If I cannot tell him it is time to stop then who can? A true friend can tell another friend the reality.”

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Zurich - UEFA president Michel Platini delivered one of his most emotional and animated performances since his playing days when he said it was time for Sepp Blatter to quit as president of Fifa with world soccer's body facing yet another corruption crisis.

He said that he hoped that 45 or 46 of Europe's eligible 53 voting nations would vote for Jordan's Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein in Friday's presidential election against Blatter who is standing for a fifth term as president.

Those votes would not be enough to topple Blatter but would send a strong signal of disapproval.

Platini suggested UEFA could withdraw from Fifa if huge changes are not brought in to world soccer's embattled governing body, but also admitted he faces something of a crisis of his own.

David Gill of England, who is joining the Fifa executive committee as the British vice-president, has said he will not take up his seat on the executive if Blatter is re-elected. Platini said he hoped he could persuade Gill to change his mind over the next few weeks.

Platini, one of the greatest footballers of all time, said he began his long relationship with Blatter in 1998 by which time he had swapped his France shirt to become the organiser of the 1998 World Cup in France.

“I have affection for Mr Blatter, and he always said he was like an uncle to me. But enough is enough.

“If I cannot tell him it is time to stop then who can? A true friend can tell another friend the reality.”

Platini said that during an emergency committee meeting at Fifa earlier on Thursday, he told Blatter to step down.

“I said, I'm asking you to leave, Fifa's image is terrible. He said that he couldn't leave all of a sudden.”

Platini added: “I'm saying this with sadness and tears in my eyes, but there have been too many scandals, Fifa doesn't deserve to be treated this way.”

Platini, who decided last August to stand for re-election as UEFA president and not run for the Fifa presidency, originally was a close ally of Blatter, but was fulsome in his support of Prince Ali, who is the only candidate facing Blatter in Friday's vote.

“Prince Ali has all the legitimacy he needs, he is young, he is ambitious and that is why I support him, he can do some good, he can change things, he doesn't need money because he is a Prince,” Platini told reporters at a news conference.

“A very large majority of national associations from Europe will vote for Prince Ali, and if they are to be trusted I believe he will get 45 or 46 votes from Europe. I'm trying to convince a couple who are not convinced.”

Fifa's 209 members will vote on Friday with a two-thirds majority needed to win on the first ballot. If that does not happen then a straight majority is required to win a second ballot.

Asked if he realistically believed that Blatter could lose Friday's vote, Platini replied: “I think he can be beaten, yes. Before yesterday no, but after what happened yesterday, yes. Enough is enough. I think there will be a lot of changes.”

On Wednesday police officers arrested seven Fifa officials in Zurich on corruption charges while authorities in the United States issued proceedings against 18 others involved in alleged corruption involving Fifa matters.

“I am the first one to be disgusted by this (Fifa corruption). I have stomach trouble when I think about the Fifa problem,” he said.”

“I am a great admirer of Fifa and I've followed it for some years, but I don't know where to put myself. I get the impression that if Fifa is not going to do anything, the FBI will do it for them.”

Platini added that UEFA's members would consider its future position with Fifa on June 6 at the Champions League final in Berlin, one week after the dust had settled.

He said that he “did not wish” a European boycott of the World Cup, but added that preserving Europe's current total of 13 places at the 32-team tournament was a “red line not to be crossed.”

“President Blatter is playing with the World Cup slots, so everyone is nervous. I have an iron-clad mandate from all European associations and there is a red line that will not be crossed and that is our number of slots in the World Cup.”

“Europe will not lose a slot in 2018 and then in the World Cup in 2022, we will stick to 13. That will not be changed, we are not going to allow that.”

Reuters



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Putin backs Blatter for Fifa president

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused the US of meddling outside its jurisdiction in the arrest of Fifa officials.

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Moscow - Russian President Vladimir Putin defended Russia's right to host the 2018 soccer World Cup on Thursday and accused the United States of meddling outside its jurisdiction in the arrest of top officials from world governing body Fifa.

Putin said the arrests in Switzerland on Wednesday were an “obvious attempt” to prevent Fifa head Sepp Blatter's re-election this week but that the 79-year-old had Russia's backing.

“If anything happened, it did not happen on US territory and the United states has nothing to do with it,” he said. “This is yet another blatant attempt (by the United States) to extend its jurisdiction to other states.”

The world's most popular sport was plunged into turmoil this week when seven senior soccer officials were arrested on U.S. corruption charges to face extradition from Switzerland.

Swiss authorities also announced a criminal investigation into the awarding of the next two World Cups, including the 2018 tournament which was granted to Russia in 2010 by a committee containing two of the indicted Fifa officials.

After hosting the Winter Olympics in Sochi last year, the World Cup will be a chance for Russia to showcase itself as a global power at a time of deteriorating relations with the West over the crisis in Ukraine.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told RIA news agency on Thursday there was no risk of Russia losing its right to host the 2018 tournament, but critics questioned Putin's anti-American rhetoric.

“If the investigators do not have any concrete proof to show that the Russian bid campaign violated any rules, then there is no need to resort to politics,” said Alisher Aminov, president of the national Fund for the Development of Football.

Putin said Fifa head Blatter, who is standing for re-election to a fifth term at the Fifa Congress in Zurich on Friday, had been pressured to strip Russia of its rights to host the 2018 World Cup and lambasted Washington's extradition requests.

“Unfortunately, our American partners use such methods to achieve their selfish aims and illegally persecute people,” he said, citing former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, both of whom have evaded prosecution in the United States by hiding abroad.

“I do not rule out that in the case of Fifa, it's exactly the same,” Putin said.

Reuters



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Australia to vote against Blatter

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Australian soccer officials are planning to vote for Prince Ali bin Al Hussein at the Fifa presidential election.

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Sydney - Australian soccer officials said they were planning to vote for Prince Ali bin Al Hussein at the Fifa presidential election, in direct contrast to the Asian Football Confederation which had earlier re-affirmed its support for Sepp Blatter.

The Football Federation of Australia had previously been a staunch ally of Blatter but issued a statement on Thursday saying soccer's world governing body needed a new leader.

“FFA believes that profound change within Fifa is needed as soon as possible to address issues of governance and transparency,” the statement read.

Reuters



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Blatter chairs emergency Fifa meeting

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Fifa boss Sepp Blatter chaired an emergency meeting of the football body following the arrest of top officials.

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Zurich - Fifa President Sepp Blatter chaired an emergency meeting with representatives from Fifa's six confederations on Thursday following the wave of arrests of football officials including two Fifa vice-presidents in Zurich on Wednesday.

The Fifa emergency committee rarely meets and two of its nominated members Jeffrey Webb, the president of Concacaf and Eugenio Figueredo of Uruguay, the South American confederation president, were not present as they were among those detained on Wednesday.

A Fifa representative said: “There was a meeting today with the president and the representatives from the confederations to discuss the current situation.”

The rare meeting of the emergency committee comes one day before Fifa's Congress is due to elect a new president and Blatter, seeking a fifth term of office is resisting calls from European soccer governing body Uefa to postpone the election for six months.

Blatter has also not been seen in public since the latest corruption crisis began early on Wednesday morning. – Reuters



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Benitez confirms Napoli exit

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Napoli coach Rafa Benitez has announced he is leaving after two years with the Serie A club amid widespread expectation he is poised to replace the sacked Carlo Ancelotti at Real Madrid.

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Naples, Italy - Napoli coach Rafa Benitez has announced he is leaving after two years with the Serie A club amid widespread expectation he is poised to replace the sacked Carlo Ancelotti at Real Madrid.

Spaniard Benitez, who had a stint in Real's youth set-up in the 1990s, made the announcement at a news conference with Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis.

Benitez declined to answer questions about his future, saying he had taken the decision to leave “for family reasons”. – Reuters



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No plans to question Blatter

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Authorities said there were no plans as yet to question Fifa president Sepp Blatter in their investigation of money laundering.

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Swiss authorities said there were no plans as yet to question Fifa's veteran leader Sepp Blatter in their investigation of money laundering and corruption allegations against football's main international body.

“For the time being, there are no plans to question the Fifa president,” Andre Marty, a spokesman for the office of Switzerland's attorney general, told AFP in an email.

His comment came after Fifa was rocked Wednesday by early morning arrests of seven football officials at a luxury hotel in Zurich, where the organisation is based and where its annual congress kicks off Thursday.

The arrests came at the request of US authorities, who said nine football officials were among a total of 14 people facing up to 20 years in jail if found guilty in the long-running corruption case involving more than $150 million in bribes.

US documents indicate that South Africa paid bribes to Fifa officials to secure the 2010 World Cup.

Swiss police also searched Fifa's headquarters as part of a separate investigation into the award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar.

Blatter, who has headed Fifa for 17 years and is set to stand for reelection on Friday, was not on the list.

The beleaguered 79-year-old Fifa president remained closeted in his office as global headlines slammed the “World Cup of fraud”, with many calling for him to step down.

Blatter, who nonetheless remains favourite to win Friday's election, vowed in a statement late Wednesday that any officials found guilty of corruption would be expelled from the sport.

“Such misconduct has no place in football and we will ensure that those who engage in it are put out of the game,” he said.– AFP



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De Sa’s focus is on Ajax, not Mashaba

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Roger De Sa refuses to be drawn into a war of words with Bafana Bafana coach Shakes Mashaba.

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Roger De Sa refuses to be drawn into a war of words with Bafana Bafana coach Shakes Mashaba.

Mashaba was up in arms earlier in the week after reading in a Joburg newspaper that Ajax Cape Town coach De Sa was quoted as saying that “Cape Town players get overlooked”.

The SA national team’s head coach then went on radio to say he had wanted to include Ajax players in the Cosafa Cup squad, but never got the go-ahead from the Cape side.

“I went to Cape Town to speak to them about giving us their players,” Mashaba told the radio station. “Roger was in that meeting with the director (Ari Efstathiou), and we asked them to release their players for the national team and they flatly refused. He (De Sa) should apologise because when you are talking about the national team, you are talking about me and they are making me look bad.”

De Sa said he was unaware of the furore, but had been alerted to it when his sister in Joburg sent him a link to the story. The Ajax coach said he certainly wasn’t going to dignify it with a response. As far as he was concerned, it was simply a case of his words being twisted to suit the thrust of the article.

“I certainly don’t remember saying anything like that,” said De Sa. “What I did say was that we had six nominees for the Premier Soccer League (PSL) awards and I would like to see them being considered for national teams. I was also referring more particularly to the youth players in the squad, who cannot get into the junior national squads… For example, at the age of 21, Travis Graham is the youngest captain in the PSL, he hasn't even sniffed the national under-23 squad. What about Mosa Lebusa? Probably one of the better left-backs in the country – yet, he, too, apparently isn’t good enough for a place in the under-23 squad.

“But I don’t want to get involved. It’s not my problem, is it? My job is to focus on the success of Ajax. In any case, I get on very well with Shakes...”

And, so, looking back at the season just past – in which the Cape club finished fifth on the PSL standings and as runners-up in the Nedbank Cup – what is De Sa’s assessment of the campaign?

“I’m content with what we achieved, but I don’t believe it’s any cause to get carried away,” said De Sa. “The important thing to remember is that we still didn’t win anything. We certainly can’t brag too much because we have nothing to show for the season. What we did do, though, was build a sound foundation for the season ahead.

“I don’t think many people expected us to perform as well as we did. The main thing was that we always hung in there and kept on believing. We stayed in touch with the front four throughout the season and that was good.

“And, if you think about it, it could have been better. There was a period in December when we hit a bad patch, with four draws and four losses, and that was during the time when our injuries and lack of depth came to the fore. But once we brought in Toriq Losper, Erwin Isaacs and Riyaad Norodien in January, it made the squad competitive again. Players then came back from injury and we had the necessary depth to maintain a good finish to the season.”

De Sa said that his top priority was to strengthen the squad – he now has an extra competition to focus on, with Ajax participating in the African Confederations Cup next season.

“There are a few areas we need to strengthen,” he said. “Top of the list is a big, strong centre-back, which will be important for certain games in the PSL and a definite must for the Confederations Cup.

“Then, we have to focus on a striker. I think if you look at Ajax’s history, you will see that when the club has a good goalscorer, they usually do well, like when Terror Fanteni and Mabhudi Khenyeza were here. The idea is probably to look for two strikers, one who can play the target role and one who can perhaps play out wide as well. This will be important because we will lose Tashreeq Morris for the first few months of next season (Morris tore ligaments in his knee during the Nedbank Cup final).

“And we will also have to find a right-back because Nazeer Allie has moved to Wits. Obviously, for this position, we will first see what we have in the youth ranks before making a decision on looking for a new player.

“But the big problem, of course, at a club like Ajax, is the size of the cheque book. I have to work within a budget when trying to find players and that’s always a difficult exercise. But we are trying… I’m on the phone all the time, I’m calling in favours, I’m looking, and we are doing the best we can… But we’ll see how it goes.

“But, essentially, I want to get four decent players who will improve the squad… I don’t want any passengers.” - Cape Argus



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Real deny Pogba report

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Real Madrid have denied a report in an Italian newspaper that claimed the La Liga club had made an offer to buy Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba.

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Madrid - Real Madrid have denied a report in an Italian newspaper that claimed the La Liga club had made an offer to buy Juventus midfielder Paul Pogba.

“Real Madrid have had no contact either with Juventus or the player's agent and, as a consequence, the reports published in this newspaper are completely false,” Real said on their website on Thursday (www.realmadrid.com).

France international Pogba, 22, has been a key part of Juve's run to the brink of a treble of trophies this season.

The Turin-based club comfortably secured a fourth straight Serie A title, beat Lazio to win the Italian Cup and will take on Barcelona in the Champions League final.

Pogba's header set up former Real striker Alvaro Morata to score the goal that sent Juve through to the showpiece in Berlin on June 6 at Real's expense.

According to reports in Spain, Barca are also keen to sign Pogba, who had a troubled stint with English Premier League side Manchester United before joining Juve in 2012.

He has a market value of 50 million euros ($55 million), according to website Transfermarkt.de. – Reuters



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Mbalula denies WC 2010 allegations

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Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula has denied the Fifa 2010 world cup bribery allegations.

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Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula has denied the Fifa 2010 world cup bribery allegations.

He was speaking at a media briefing in Johannesburg on Thursday morning.

Mbalula claims that the auditor-general found no $10 million amount pertaining to the alleged bribe.

He could not comment on speculation but said he would find out more about the alleged corruption through diplomatic channels.



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SA World Cup was clean - Radebe

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There was nothing untoward with SA's hosting of the World Cup, Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe has said.

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Cape Town - There was nothing untoward with South Africa’s hosting of the World Cup.

This is according to Minister in the Presidency Jeff Radebe, who told journalists on Thursday morning that a “reputed audit firm Ernst & Young” audited the 2010 World Cup when it ended and gave South Africa a clean audit.

On Wednesday South Africa’s boast of hosting the best ever World Cup soccer was tarnished by claims that a $10 million bribe was paid to secure it.

US prosecutors issued an indictment on Wednesday accusing nine Fifa officials and five sports media and promotions executives of bribes involving more than $150 million over 24 years. The US investigation said South African officials paid $10 million in bribes to host the 2010 tournament. Some bribes were handed over in a briefcase stuffed with $10 000 bundles of cash.

Speaking in Cape Town during the post-Cabinet briefing on Thursday morning, Radebe said: “As far as we're concerned, we got a clean audit, never any suggestion anything untoward happened in SA.”

Radebe was a member of the local organising comimitee.

He said while Fifa arrests were not discussed at Cabinet, “as a country we will ensure we are collaborating (with the investigation”.

Earlier on Thursday the SA Football Association dismissed the allegations as “baseless”.

IOL



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Sponsors issue stern warning to Fifa

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Top football sponsors Coca-Cola, Adidas, McDonald's and Visa pressed Fifa to clean itself up.

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Top football sponsors Coca-Cola, Adidas, McDonald's and Visa pressed Fifa to clean itself up as the newest corruption scandal threatens efforts to market their products through the world's most popular sport.

The companies that pay hundreds of millions of dollars to place their ads around World Cup and other global football venues said Fifa needed stronger ethical standards, after seven of its officials were arrested in Switzerland for bribery.

The arrests came as part of a US Justice Department case that named nine officials of football's governing body, and five sports marketing officials, in a number of instances of bribes and kickbacks involving sponsorships over the past two decades.

Visa said that if Fifa's ethical problems aren't addressed it may pull its sponsorship.

“Our disappointment and concern with Fifa in light of today's developments is profound,” the company said in a strongly-worded statement, adding that it expects the football organization to rebuild with “strong ethical practices.”

“Should FIFA fail to do so, we have informed them that we will reassess our sponsorship,” Visa said.

Coca-Cola, which pays an estimated $30 million a year to be one of five official Fifa Partners, issued a stern rebuke to the organization.

“This lengthy controversy has tarnished the mission and ideals of the Fifa World Cup and we have repeatedly expressed our concerns about these serious allegations. We expect Fifa to continue to address these issues thoroughly,” the company said.

“McDonald's takes matters of ethics and corruption very seriously,” the US fast-food company, an official sponsor of the 2018 World Cup in Russia, said.

“We are in contact with Fifa on this matter. We will continue to monitor the situation very closely.”

Also speaking out were Adidas and Budweiser.

The German sportswear group said it would encourage football's global governing body “to establish and follow transparent compliance standards in everything they do.”

And Budweiser, the US beer unit of Belgian brewing giant AB InBev, said: “We expect all of our partners to maintain strong ethical standards and operate with transparency.”

Complaints against Fifa from global consumer-goods giants that pump hundreds of millions of dollars annually into the world's leading sport have mounted over the past two years.

None of the official sponsors has been implicated in the scandals. But all clearly worry that the cloud over the organization could stain their own reputations and hurt sales.

They have been especially worried over corruption allegations behind Fifa's award of the World Cup to Qatar in 2022.

Last year five top sponsors – Coca-Cola, Hyundai, Adidas, Sony and Visa – called for a proper investigation of the 2022 bid process.

And last week Coke and Visa expressed worries over the treatment of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers in Qatar who are building the facilities for the tournament, after human rights groups and journalists exposed dire work conditions.

None of the sponsors, whose funding is essential to Fifa, has gone so far as to withdraw its sponsorship of the sport.

But amid likely pressure from the public and shareholders to avoid being tainted by the Fifa investigation, sports marketing expert David Carter of the Sports Business Group said they “have to look as though they are part of the solution.”

The scandal is a risk for their brands, he said, and that could lead to pressure “to reallocate their dollars” for advertising.

“They need to be proactive in calling for a complete cleansing or threaten, if not actually pull, their sponsorship over time,” he said.

“The large majority of sponsors will hang in there,” said Andrew Zimbalist, an economist and sports business expert at Smith College.

“Most sponsors who were putting money into Fifa knew about Fifa's problems, so this was not new for them,” he said. –



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Uefa wants Fifa to delay elections

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Uefa has called for Fifa presidential election to be postponed in the wake of dawn arrests at Fifa's official hotel.

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European football's governing body Uefa has called for Fifa presidential election to be postponed in the wake of dawn arrests at Fifa's official hotel in Zurich over corruption charges

The body's top officials have threatened to boycott Fifa's congress altogether after they held an emergency meeting in Warsaw prior to last night's Europa League final.

They concluded Uefa's preferred candidate, Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein, would not be able to prevent the Fifa president Sepp Blatter's re-election even after yesterday's extraordinary developments.

Football's governing body, Fifa, is determined to carry on as normal, despite the arrests of several of its officials on charges of money laundering, wire fraud and racketeering.

Uefa consists of 54 of Fifa's 209 member nations. If all boycotted the congress, it would represent a near-fatal blow to the legitimacy of the vote, but many of its members are supportive of Blatter, particularly in eastern Europe.

Uefa said in a statement: “The upcoming Fifa congress risks turning into a farce and therefore the European associations will have to consider carefully if they should even attend this congress and caution a system, which, if it is not stopped, will ultimately kill football.”

Blatter is not among the 14 officials indicted by the US Department of Justice following years of investigation by the FBI, and while he failed to show at either of his two planned public appearances in Zurich yesterday, Fifa's director of communications, Walter de Gregorio, denied Blatter had been lobbying for a delay to the planned presidential ballot. De Gregorio even welcomed developments.

“This for Fifa is good,” he said in a hastily arranged press conference at Fifa's headquarters. “It's not good in terms of image, it's not good in terms of reputation, but in terms of cleaning up, everything we did in the last four years, this is good.”

The FA president, Greg Dyke, is due to arrive in Switzerland this morning and will meet with other European football leaders to work out how to proceed. He said the developments were “very serious for Fifa and its current leadership”.

Dyke added: “As one of the associations who nominated Prince Ali, it will not surprise you to learn that if the election for president goes ahead, the FA will be voting for him. However, there must be a question mark over whether the election should take place in these circumstances.

“Clearly, things are changing quickly and our delegation, which I am leading, will discuss the position and what we should do with our colleagues in Uefa when we meet.”

The new Sports Minister, Tracey Crouch, said she fully backed the FA's position and called for “serious reform at the top of Fifa”.

But how that can take place is not clear. In Brooklyn, the US Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, said the corruption allegations implicated “two generations” of leaders at Fifa, with the man many had seen as the moderniser, Concacaf president Jeffrey Webb, among them.

There is no provision in the Fifa statutes to delay the presidential election, nor to widen the pool of candidates, with only Blatter and Prince Ali standing.

The former Uefa head, Lennart Johansson, who contested the 1998 election, when Blatter's reign started, called for the 2018 and 2022 tournaments to be removed from Russia and Qatar.

He said: “I expect they will reconsider the decisions. Blatter himself has said that the decision to go east wasn't proper.”

Johansson would like to see the 2018 finals played in England. “They [England] haven't had it since 1966, and it's considered 'the motherland of football'. They are worthy of the attention,” Johansson said. – The Independent



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Ings snubs Spurs, wants Anfield move

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Burnley striker Danny Ings has made it clear to Tottenham Hotspur that it is his preference to join Liverpool this summer.

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Burnley striker Danny Ings has made it clear to Tottenham Hotspur that it is his preference to join Liverpool this summer in spite of the London club's continued attempts to muscle in on the deal.

As The Independent revealed yesterday, Spurs have been persistent in their interest in Ings, who is a free agent next week and available for a training compensation fee of around £5m-6m. Burnley have been eager to earn as much as possible for the 22-year-old, and Spurs have offered to pay over the odds for the player.

However, it is Ings' long-standing preference to join Liverpool, where he has been a long-term target for manager Brendan Rodgers. It will not be Burnley's choice which club the player joins, and if a compensation fee cannot be agreed with Liverpool through negotiation, it will have to be set by tribunal.

The England Under-21 striker is on holiday ahead of the European Championship next month and hopes to resolve his situation before Gareth Southgate's squad travel to the Czech Republic. He has attracted interest from a range of clubs, including Manchester United, and, in Europe, Real Sociedad and Borussia Mönchengladbach, but it has always been his first choice to join Liverpool.

It is unclear why Spurs have continued to pursue Ings despite it being made clear to them that the player has established Liverpool as his first choice. Spurs have missed out on Jay Rodriguez, who has signed a new contract at Southampton, and Morgan Schneiderlin, who wants to join Arsenal. Spurs are also trying to negotiate a deal for the 24-year-old Burney right-back Kieran Trippier and would like to pay a combined fee for him and Ings.

Burnley have to make an offer of a new contract to Ings in order for them to be entitled to compensation on an out-of-contract player under the age of 24. – The Independent



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Napoli ban questions over Rafa’s future

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Napoli will not allow questions about coach Rafa Benitez's future at a news conference amid widespread expectations the Spaniard is set to join Real Madrid.

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Napoli will not allow questions about coach Rafa Benitez's future at a news conference amid widespread expectations the Spaniard is poised to replace the sacked Carlo Ancelotti at Real Madrid.

Benitez, who has a contract with the Serie A side until the end of June, is due to speak to the media at 1100 GMT with Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis.

With Spanish media reporting Benitez is set to be given the Real job, Napoli said in a statement on their website (www.sscnapoli.it) on Wednesday that the news conference would be exclusively about “issues related to Napoli and not the future of Benitez.

“Therefore, questions about the future of the blues' coach will not be accepted,” they added.

Italian Ancelotti was dismissed on Monday two years into a three-year contract after Real ended the season without winning a major trophy.

Benitez had a stint as a Real youth coach in the 1990s and went on to manage clubs including Valencia, Liverpool, Inter Milan and Chelsea.

The 55-year-old is in his second season at Napoli, with whom has won the Italian Cup and the Italian Super Cup.

Real president Florentino Perez said on Monday the club would reveal Ancelotti's replacement next week. – Reuters



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