The president of Fifa, Sepp Blatter, is to press ahead with his bid for a fifth term as the head of football’s scandal-hit world governing body, rebuffing a personal plea for him to quit from the head of the game in Europe.
Uefa, European football’s governing body, ruled out seeking a postponement of Friday’s election and will instead back Blatter’s challenger, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan.
Blatter made his decision to stay after a series crisis meetings at Fifa HQ with representatives of the six regional football confederations. He rejected a face-to-face demand from the president of Uefa, Michel Platini, for his resignation.
“I asked him to resign: enough is enough, Sepp. He listened to me but he told me it is too late,” Platini told a news conference in Zurich. Platini said he was “disgusted” and “sickened” by the scandal gripping the organisation.
Live Fifa: Michel Platini asked Sepp Blatter to step down over corruption arrests – live
The latest news and updates on the crisis at Fifa, where Sepp Blatter is under increasing pressure to step down
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Blatter’s determination to press ahead with the vote comes despite pressure from major sponsors. The British government called on Blatter to quit, but the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, denounced the US-led investigation that led to the arrest of Fifa officials in a dawn raid on their hotel in Zurich on Wednesday.
In total nine serving and former officials and five sports media and promotions executives were charged over alleged bribes totalling more than $150m (£100m) made over 24 years. A separate Swiss investigation has been launched into the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.
Following a meeting of all 54 Uefa members on Thursday, it emerged that former Manchester United chief executive David Gill has vowed to relinquish his seat as vice-president of Fifa if Blatter wins Friday’s election.
Gill, a board member of Uefa and and the English Football Association (FA), was applauded when he said he would not take up the seat he was due to inherit from Jim Boyce after Friday’s Fifa Congress.
Platini told the Uefa delegates the confederation needed to unite in support of Blatter’s challenger, Prince Ali.
Most of Uefa’s members will back Ali in Friday’s election, though some, including Russia and Spain, will remain staunch backers of the incumbent.
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Prince Ali is understood to have told the Uefa delegates that he believed he had the support of more than 60 associations outside Europe, which would give him more than enough backing to take the contest to a second round. Ali or Blatter would need a two-thirds majority of the 209 votes to win in the first round and a simple majority thereafter.
One Uefa source said that when Platini, a former supporter of Blatter, personally asked the president to stand down he told him he would not but that he might have considered it if he had been asked earlier.
Michael van Praag, the Dutch FA president who stood down from the race to succeed Blatter last week before Wednesday’s arrests, said Uefa had decided against a boycott of the vote on Friday because that would guarantee Blatter a victory.
John Delaney, chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, said: “David Gill stood up and said he won’t take up his seat – that was the big thing. I think it was very brave and very honest of him and there was a good round of applause. People thought: ‘That’s a man of honour.’
“From his own personal perspective he doesn’t want to serve under Blatter and you have to respect that position. There wasn’t a vote taken but Michel Platini will tell you Uefa is unified. Whether all 53 transfer their votes over I don’t know – I think one or two will be lost along the way.”
In London, the British government’s sports minister called on Blatter to quit Fifa. John Whittingdale, the culture, media and sport secretary, said the “deeply flawed and corrupt organisation” needed a change of leadership. A spokesman for the prime minister, David Cameron, said he “associated himself fully” with the comments.
