The story appears on

Page A16

November 12, 2015

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Sports » Soccer

Stressed out Blatter in hospital but feeling fine

SUSPENDED FIFA president Sepp Blatter has been hospitalized after being placed under medical observation for stress, but he is expecting to leave the facility early next week, his spokesman said yesterday.

“He is now, at this moment, in hospital,” Blatter’s spokesman Klaus Stoehlker said by phone. “He is preparing to leave on Monday and will be back on the job on Tuesday.”

Stoehlker added that 79-year-old Blatter had “regained his good humor” and has vowed to persist with “his fight against the (FIFA) ethics committee” which suspended him for 90 days over corruption claims.

Blatter, long the most powerful man in football, suffered a medical incident last weekend and had been placed under medical observation from his home in Switzerland. Blatter’s daughter Corinne has said that her father had been forced to cancel all of his appointments up to November 15.

Stoehlker previously said the stress-related incident had been brought on by the pressure the embattled Swiss national has faced in recent weeks.

Blatter has been at the center of the worst scandal to ever hit world football. Swiss prosecutors opened a criminal case against him in September, an announcement that led to his suspension from FIFA.

Before he was suspended, Blatter, who has been in charge of FIFA since 1998, had said he would step down on February 26, next year, when a FIFA congress elects a new president.

Meanwhile, Switzerland’s justice ministry says it has approved the extradition of FIFA investigation suspect Eugenio Figueredo to his native Uruguay, though the move is unlikely to happen.

The US can block the order because its request to extradite Figueredo — which the Swiss already granted — is pending.

Figueredo, a former FIFA vice president, is accused of taking bribes and fraudulently obtaining American citizenship. The ministry says the 83-year-old Figueredo appealed the United States extradition.

In a related case in August, the US blocked Nicaragua’s attempt to bring home former FIFA staffer Julio Rocha.

Figueredo and Rocha are among seven soccer officials arrested in May in raids in Zurich. Both face 20 years in prison on racketeering charges.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend