FIFA faced major embarrassment on Wednesday as the former president of the global football Sepp Blatter body attended a World Cup match in Moscow.
The former FIFA president is currently serving a six-year ban from “all football activities” for unethical conduct after football’s world governing body was rocked by a global corruption scandal in 2015.
Blatter’s presence puts current FIFA head Gianni Infantino in a tight spot as he promised to draw a line under FIFAs corruption problems and clean up the organisation.
TASS news agency quoted Alexei Sorokin, head of the Russia-2018 organising committee, as saying he had seen Infantino and Blatter at Moscows Luzhniki stadium watching Portugals 1-0 win over Morocco.
“Today I saw Infantino and Blatter at the stadium, its true,” TASS quoted Sorokin as saying, adding that the former FIFA head had praised Russia’s organisation of the World Cup.
Speaking in an interview with Russian news channel RT, Blatter said he had advocated for Russia to be chosen as the World Cup host in 2010.
“When I arrived yesterday, I saw it a little bit, its my World Cup. How I was received here, television, cameras, people photographs and so on,” he said in the interview filmed in front of the Kremlin.
Blatter told Reuters in March he had been invited to attend the World Cup by President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has a long-standing close relationship. A spokesman for Blatter said he was scheduled to meet with the Russian leader while in Moscow.
However, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday Blatter was visiting Russia in a non-official capacity.