Soccer: van Hattum backs under fire Blatter

Frank van Hattum. Photo / Getty Images

New Zealand sided with the majority as the controversial Sepp Blatter was given another four-year term as president of the football's world governing body today.

The Swiss businessman was re-elected to head Fifa after a congress in Zurich overshadowed by a raft of accusations that the organisation is riddled by corruption.

New Zealand Football chairman Frank van Hattum was one of 186 delegates to cast a vote backing the retention of Blatter, Fifa's president since 1998, with another 17 voting against giving him another term.

"It was a unanimous vote to go forward with unity," van Hattum said.

England attempted to have the vote delayed on the basis there was no one standing against Blatter, but van Hattum dismissed that as irrelevant.

"The issue of only one man standing was a red herring. It has happened before when there have been no challenges," he told Radio Live.

Van Hattum said the congress meeting lasted nine hours today during which there was much heated debate.

"Some unfortunate comments were made during the day but people needed to air them.

"The commitment going forward, which everyone applauds, is that there is going to be some change in the way they do deal with the issues and how transparency comes into the game.

"What we shouldn't forget is all the good things Fifa does and now we have to address that five percent where the rubber hits the road and destroy that old reputation."

He said Fifa was changing the way it operated to introduce more transparency to the decision making process.

In future, World Cup hosting venues would be decided by Fifa's 208 associate members while its ethics committee was to be enlarged.

As for the corruption allegations, van Hattum said Fifa could not claim to be perfect.

"There is some truth whenever there is some rubbish being spouted out there and Fifa do need to address it.

"They have heard the message loud and clear and the humility that came through today said `yes, we have made some mistakes and we need to fix this'.

"In such a large and complex organisation no one can give a 100 percent guarantee that everyone is clean 100 percent of the time.

"But the commitment was that congress would address it and keep addressing it and some of the challenges put back to the members on how we would vote for future World Cups, and some of the ethics committee issues, will actually have more transparency.

"That is a start and we have to deal with that because it is such a shame that with all the money that has been invested around the world and all the many projects is being destroyed by some innuendo and the odd unsavoury incident."

- NZPA