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| Photo Credit- The Guardian UK |
SPORT: FOOTBALL
ROLE: ADMINISTRATOR
NATIONALITY:
SWISS
Joseph Sepp
Blatter was born on the 10th March 1936 in the Alpine town of Visp near the famous
Italian border of Matterhorn.
Blatter came
from a very impoverished background; living in a wooden hovel with his
factory-worker dad as well as his brothers, Peter and Marco, and late sister
Ruth.
Dubbed to love 'being
the center of attention’ by his friends, Sepp in his teens took on roles
as a wedding singer, a
tap-dancer, as well as menial jobs in ski resorts.
He went on
to graduate from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland with a degree in Business
Administration and Economics.
Known as a
forward-thinker, he speaks five languages including his indigenous German, English,
French, Spanish and Italian.
In contrast,
During the early 1970s, Blatter was elected president of the World Society of
Suspenders. The said organization was setup to stop women in replacing
suspender belts with pantyhose.
He became FIFA
President in 1998.
In his 17 years
at the helm of unarguably the World's biggest sport, the comedic Swiss has seen
his reign champion many firsts in Africa including the FIFA Under-20 World Cup in
Nigeria (1999), the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in Nigeria (2009) as well as its maiden
Senior World Cup (South Africa 2010).
With an
estimated net worth of $10 million, he has been mired with long-standing
controversies and his administration labelled with scandalous corruption and
racketeering charges; the latest being that the hosts from the 1998 World Cup all
through to Qatar 2022 paid bribes to secure votes.
This led him
to announce his resignation, just three days after being re-elected for a fifth
term on May 29th,2015.
He has been
married twice and has one daughter and a granddaughter.
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