Blatter defends Iran's reinstatement in football
Dec 2, 2006 - 2:35:46 AM
, Reviewed by: Priya Saxena
|
|
|
'The World Cup pays for all the football development that goes on and we need to defend the quality of this competition to make sure that we can continue with football development.'
|
By DPA,
[RxPG] Doha, Dec 1 - FIFA president Joseph Blatter has defended the world football body's decision to allow Iranian football team to participate in the 15th Asian Games that started here Friday.
'We are not the police, but if we are informed by the federation we have to do something. That is why we tried to find a solution.
'We did not want to penalise the players, who were already on their way to play in this competition,' he said at a press conference here.
FIFA issued a ban on the Islamic Republic of Iran Football Federation - Nov 22 due to the alleged government interference in football matters.
But the ban was temporarily lifted Monday to allow the players take part in the Asian Games.
'We gave them a roadmap how to reach the situation that they are no longer suspended from the organisation and it is up to them to follow this. They have a few days to do so. We do not want them not to play football,' said Blatter.
'They have already started implementing this roadmap that we gave them, so we said that the suspension would be temporarily lifted to allow them to play.'
Asked if Iran could still be thrown out of the competition if they failed to implement the changes agreed with FIFA, Blatter said that would not happen.
'They are currently with us in Zurich and working things out. I am sure that everything will be in place, so Iran can play at these Games.'
Blatter confirmed that he would contest against for top FIFA post next year.
'I told the FIFA congress earlier this year that if they wanted me to, I would like to continue my work.
'My work is not yet finished. Next year we want to introduce a programme of football's social responsibility. In that, we will be working closely with other organizations like the UN and their agencies, like UNICEF and UNESCO.'
He said that it was too early to say how many World Cup places Asia would have at the next finals.
'We have to be fair, but we also have to take other matters into consideration.
'The World Cup pays for all the football development that goes on and we need to defend the quality of this competition to make sure that we can continue with football development.'
Blatter also said that he was confident that the Gulf region could host the World Cup.
|
Subscribe to India Newsletter
|
|
E-mail Address:
|
|
Feedback
|
For any corrections of factual information, to contact the editors or to send
any medical news or health news press releases, use
feedback form
|
Top of Page
|
