Call for Blatter to step down from presidency to restore FIFA's credibility

A former member of FIFA's independent governance committee believes that the world football governing body's credibility cannot be recovered until Sepp Blatter leaves his role as President.

Michael Hershman, an expert in transparency, said that Blatter should leave for the good of the sport and let new blood come in. He said that FIFA needs a change of leadership, adding that any time an organisation has gone through years and years of scandal and it has a credibility problem, it's always best for the leaders to change.

Blatter has been president of FIFA since 1998, and last month declared his intention to run for re-election, despite promises that his current fourth term would be his last, something which Hershman described as unfortunate, The BBC reported.

Speaking at the Qatar-backed International Sport Security conference, Hershman also called for commercial sponsors of FIFA to make a stand. He said that he is very disappointed about the lack of intervention from external stakeholders, in particular sponsors who from time to time issued press releases saying that they expect FIFA to conduct itself with integrity.

But, Hershman added that in very few cases have they said that unless one makes the following changes they are going to walk away, and until they do that there's not going to be the kind of change that really needs to happen.

Hershman said that in general they are reaching a point where people are getting so angry, so frustrated. He said that they are very close to the tipping point, almost past the tipping point.