Sepp Blatter Re-Elected as FIFA President

Sepp Blatter concluded a difficult week by handily winning a fifth term as president of world soccer's governing body Friday, beating Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan in a vote of the body's member organizations.(Blatter, FIFA's Marathon Man)

Blatter soundly defeated Ali in the first round of voting, 133-73, but fell just short of the percentage needed for re-election. But Ali conceded just as the election was headed to a second ballot.(Prince Ali Concedes)

The announcement came after a prolonged voting period in which a member of each delegation was called to the front of the arena in alphabetical order by delegation to cast a ballot in one of two boxy white voting booths. The process took more than an hour.

Blatter, one of the most powerful people in sports, has run FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, as an autocracy since winning the presidency in 1998. He was expected to defeat Ali despite the allegations of criminal behavior that have engulfed his organization this week. The vote took place only miles from the luxury hotel where several top FIFA officials were arrested Wednesday on corruption charges brought by the United States.

For years, FIFA's membership has largely operated in lock step under Blatter as he weathered numerous controversies - corruption, bribery, match-fixing and others - and rarely showed any sign of vulnerability. In the previous two presidential races, he ran unopposed. The federal charges this week against some of his top officials were considered an international embarrassment, but hardly a threat to his power.

The FIFA president is elected by a one-country, one-vote poll of its 209 member federations, making the many smaller countries who support Blatter an effective counterweight to his unpopularity elsewhere, most notably in Europe.

Blatter, who was not directly implicated in the indictment or in a separate investigation announced by Swiss authorities into the 2010 voting that awarded the next two World Cups, said in a speech before the vote Friday: "I am being held accountable for the current storm. OK, so be it. I will shoulder it."

He acknowledged in a speech Thursday that these are "unprecedented and difficult times" for FIFA. But he also tried to absolve himself of blame for FIFA's latest scandal.

"We, or I, cannot monitor everyone all of the time," he said. "If people want to do wrong, they will also try to hide it. But it must also fall to me to be responsible for the reputation of our entire organization, and to find a way to fix things."

Ali, a brother of King Abdullah II, ran on a platform of transparency. He promised Friday "to throw open the door of FIFA house."

In an interview in March, he said that if he somehow unseated Blatter, he had no intention of remaining in power as long.

"One term," he said. "One term. I want to get in there, make the changes that need to be made and then get out of the way."

Blatter promised that a new term would be his last. He made the same promise before his last election.

Separately, FIFA avoided a controversy Friday when the head of Palestine's soccer federation, Jibril Rajoub, withdrew a proposal to suspend Israel from world soccer. Given the floor to address the delegates, Rajoub made an impassioned speech accusing Israel of racism and imposing unfair restrictions on player movement in the region, but then said he was withdrawing the proposal at the urging of top FIFA officials.