FIFA President Blatter reflects on South African World Cup
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Play Video'This is development of football and don't speak about money.' Those were the words of under fire FIFA boss Sepp Blatter in Africa where he was handing back 100 million dollars to South Africa as part of its bid to make a lasting legacy. The money is to be used to fund the development of football in the country, 20 Million of that has already been used to build a new Football Association headquarters in South Africa.
FIFA is estimated to have extracted 3 and a half billion pounds from the the 2010 South African World Cup. If you remember, there were protests from local's employed in grounds who were underpaid and strikes by stadium and transport workers who couldn't afford tickets to games. However, Blatter negated to mention that and met with President Jacob Zuma to officially close the summer event and hail it as a success. President Zuma talked about a new dawn on the African continent, citing that Afro Pessimism has now been replaced by Afro Optimism and that the world cup helped change peoples perceptions about the country. However, a besieged Blatter used his address to try and reprimand his critics, basically those who are asking FIFA to become an open and transparent organization.
Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA, said, 'We go to the Middle East, we go to the Arabic world, we go to the Islamic world. This is development of football and don't speak about money, this has nothing to do with money and it has nothing do here in Africa, it is development of the game. We have to go with our game some where it can improve social cultural impact and it's what we did here in Africa.'
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