Football: FA boss predicts arrest for Sepp Blatter

Sepp Blatter 'won't last'. Photo / AP

England's Football Association chairman Greg Dyke has predicted the scandal engulfing Fifa will culminate in the arrest of president Sepp Blatter, who will be forced out within months.

Blatter announced this week he will step down despite winning a fifth term as president, following a string of arrests as part of a US Department of Justice probe into corruption within the world governing body.

The 79-year-old Swiss has pledged to instigate reform of the organisation before standing aside following a new election some time between December and March 2016.

But Dyke told

The Guardian

website: "He'll be gone. He won't last. He can't last more than a couple of months. The one thing you discover if you run an organisation is that the moment you say you're going, you've gone.

"He's dead. It's over. If you resign, you resign."

Asked if he would put money on Blatter being arrested, Dyke replied: "Yes."

Dyke also dismissed suggestions England could step in to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022, after Swiss and US authorities launched probes into the bidding process in which Russia and Qatar prevailed.

England made an unsuccessful bid to host the 2018 tournament and Britain's culture, media and sport minister John Whittingdale said last week they were in a position to host the 2022 event.

Meanwhile, in rejecting claims the FA are unpopular in certain parts of the world, Dyke declared that "there are a set of values which you find in western Europe, and in America, and in Australia that don't apply everywhere".

Elaborating, he said: "My experience in Africa is that, when people go in to politics in Africa, it's incumbent upon you as part of that to look after your family.

"That's just cultural, it's a cultural difference."

- AAP