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Friday, February 24, 2012

My meeting with Sepp Blatter

Here I am in my hotel room in Zurich, fresh from a day at FIFA headquarters on the outskirts of this fabulously wealthy Swiss city. I was lucky enough to have a sit down meeting with FIFA President Sepp Blatter, three of us from my employer, The Associated Press, and four FIFA executives including the powerful Secretary General Jerome Valcke, as well as Herr Blatter. He's 75-years-old now and small in stature, but his authority is obvious in the way he switches between several European languages at the drop of a hat and zeroes in on any footballing issue you raise with him.

This wasn't an interview, just a chance to talk through various editorial issues like covering World Cups, The Arab Spring and video technology among a host of subjects.
FIFA's headquarters perch high in the snow above Zurich, looking down on a lake and across at the Alps. It's a stunning workplace, and the offices themselves are no less impressive, Built out of granite and glass, the headquarters is surrounded by football pitches - grass I think but I couldn't tell under six inches of snow - that are used by FIFA staff. UEFA vs FIFA recently was apparently a bit of a grudge match!
Once through the discreet security - everything in Zurich is discreet by the way - the entrance lobby is a vast warehouse, with a couple of receptionists looking tiny in the distance, sitting next to a gold-plated replica of the World Cup trophy. There are a dozen or so such replicas in circulation as they are used all the time. The real World Cup is solid gold and is only allowed out when it's presented to the tournament winner and allowed to be paraded around the ground. This is when FIFA officials are at their most nervous. The rest of the time the trophy is locked away securely. That's a lot of gold.
From deathly hush to noisy racket when about 100 kids emerged noisily from the auditorium where FIFA gives its press conferences, the ones where you see Blatter on television. A few steps from the auditorium is Blatter's office, though we were ushered into a separate room for our meeting with "the president," a title that is difficult for some to swallow given that the FIFA president is not a head of state. No, in many ways he's more powerful. People come to see him. As we left, officials were putting flags outside the building waiting for the arrival of Poland's sports minister, coming to see Blatter.
I had planned to sit down for a chat with FIFA's new head of refereeing, the famous ref Massimo Busacca, who has just retired from reffing at the highest level, but the meeting was squeezed out for lack of time after several hours of separate meetings and a lunch.
A fascinating day..

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