The head of the German football league, Reinhard Rauball, has told Sepp Blatter he should resign as the Fifa president over the controversy surrounding the Qatar World Cup bid.
“In contrast to others who just do it via the media, I rang up Mr Blatter personally recently and asked him to resign,” Rauball told the magazine Kicker. “I can’t be accused of holding myself back on this issue.
“But the decision by the Fifa executive committee in favour of Qatar is not made by Mr Blatter alone – 22 people are entitled to vote.”
Rauball suggested the German football association (DFB) president, Wolfgang Niersbach, could replace Blatter as the president of the world governing body. Rauball said Niersbach could provide “solutions” inside the Fifa executive committee.
“The league representatives to the DFB committee would all vote for Niersbach as a candidate,” Rauball, the president of Borussia Dortmund, said. “I am sure there will be no other opinion in the DFB committee either.”
Rauball is one of many of the game’s leading figures to call for the Michael Garcia ethics report, commissioned by Fifa to look into the bidding processes for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, to be published in full.
Earlier this month he warned that Uefa could quit Fifa if the full report was not published. “Most people just throw up their arms and say ‘that’s very bad’. But that is not enough. We need a prospect. There is no willingness to publish both the Garcia report and the decision of the ethics committee but it is simply unavoidable.”
Rauball added: “The impression remains that people are being protected and that is intolerable.”
Niersbach has yet to comment on Rauball’s suggestion but he has also called for the public release of Garcia’s report.
