FIFA president Sepp Blatter will not attend the final of the Women’s World Cup in Canada, his US lawyer confirmed on Tuesday, the first time since his election in 1998 that he has missed the climax of the showpiece event.
“Mr Blatter has informed the organizers that, for personal reasons, he will not attend the Women’s World Cup finals in Canada,” attorney Richard Cullen said.
A FIFA spokesperson later confirmed that Blatter, along with the global body’s secretary general Jerome Valcke, would be skipping the event.
“Due to their current commitments in Zurich, the FIFA president and the FIFA secretary general will remain at the FIFA headquarters,” the spokesperson said.
Speculation over whether Blatter — the self-styled “godfather” of women’s soccer — would attend Sunday’s final in Vancouver has raged ever since the tournament began.
The 79-year-old announced on June 2 that he would step down from the FIFA presidency at an extraordinary congress to be held between December this year and March next year. That decision followed the crisis that engulfed FIFA, with 18 people indicted in the US on soccer-related corruption charges involving millions of dollars in bribes.
Since then, sources close to Blatter have been reported as saying he was not ruling out the prospect of going back on his decision to resign after receiving messages of support from Asian and African federations.
Blatter’s announcement that he planned to step down came just days after he had been re-elected as president.
In an interview with the BBC in May, Blatter had presented himself as a champion of women’s soccer.
“I consider myself a little bit as a godfather of the organization of women’s football in FIFA,” Blatter said.
Under Blatter’s presidency, the Women’s World Cup has grown from a 16-team tournament to the current 24-team format.
However the soccer supremo has sometimes courted controversy in the women’s game, infamously remarking in 2004 that female players could wear tighter shorts to help make the sport more marketable.
Blatter was also criticized by US star Alex Morgan earlier this year, who said in a Time magazine interview that Blatter had failed to recognize her at a FIFA event.
RECORD DEFEAT: The Shanghai-based ‘Oriental Sports Daily’ said the drubbing was so disastrous, and taste so bitter, that all that is left is ‘numbness’ Chinese soccer fans and media rounded on the national team yesterday after they experienced fresh humiliation in a 7-0 thrashing to rivals Japan in their opening Group C match in the third phase of Asian qualifying for the 2026 World Cup. The humiliation in Saitama on Thursday against Asia’s top-ranked team was China’s worst defeat in World Cup qualifying and only a goal short of their record 8-0 loss to Brazil in 2012. Chinese President Xi Jinping once said he wanted China to host and even win the World Cup one day, but that ambition looked further away than ever after a
‘KHELIFMANIA’: In the weeks since the Algerian boxer won gold in Paris, national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women In the weeks since Algeria’s Imane Khelif won an Olympic gold medal in women’s boxing, athletes and coaches in the North African nation say national enthusiasm is inspiring newfound interest in the sport, particularly among women. Khelif’s image is practically everywhere, featured in advertisements at airports, on highway billboards and in boxing gyms. The 25-year-old welterweight’s success in Paris has vaulted her to national hero status, especially after Algerians rallied behind her in the face of uninformed speculation about her gender and eligibility to compete. Amateur boxer Zougar Amina, a medical student who has been practicing for a year, called Khelif an
Crowds descended on the home of 17-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hongchan after she won two golds at the Paris Olympics while gymnast Zhang Boheng hid in a Beijing airport toilet to escape overzealous throngs of fans. They are just two recent examples of what state media are calling “toxic fandom” and Chinese authorities have vowed to crack down on it. Some of the adulation toward China’s sports stars has been more sinister — fans obsessing over athletes’ personal lives, cyberbullying opponents or slamming supposedly crooked judges. Experts say it mirrors the kind of behavior once reserved for entertainment celebrities before
GOING GLOBAL: The regular season fixture is part of the football league’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the sport to international destinations The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil. For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians. The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures
RSS