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FIFA president Sepp
Blatter said on Sunday he wanted to set up an anti-corruption committee
after the allegations which shook soccer’s governing body last year.

Blatter also
criticised penalty shootouts, suggesting that, in a team sport, it was
wrong to use a system which turned one player into a scapegoat.

Last year two of
FIFA’s 24-man executive committee, Reynald Temarii and Amos Adamu, were
suspended after allegations they had offered to sell their votes in the
contest to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to undercover reporters
from Britain’s Sunday Times As a result, the pair missed December’s
vote in which FIFA chose Russia to host the 2018 tournament followed by
Qatar in 2022.

“I will take care
of it personally, to make sure that there is no corruption at FIFA,”
Blatter said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung.
“This committee will strengthen our credibility and give us a new image
in terms of transparency.” He said the committee would consist of seven
to nine members “not only from sport but from politics, finance,
business and culture”, although Blatter would not be on the committee
himself.

New solution?

“The committee must
be independent to guarantee maximum credibility,” he said. “I want to
present this committee to the FIFA Congress here in Zurich at the start
of June.” FIFA already has an ethics committee which dealt with last
year’s case in which four other officials were also suspended.

Blatter, who stands
for re-election in June, said he had never thought about resigning as
FIFA was rocked by last year’s allegations.

“Not for a single
moment have I thought, I must now go,” he said. “I’m staying for
longer. But I need a lot of strength, to endure the fierce criticism
against me.” Blatter then suggested that penalty shootouts were not the
best way of settling drawn matches at major tournaments.

“The discussion
which is still going on is that, in a team sport such as football, we
should try and find a solution in which the team as a unit generates
the final result,” he said.

“Not something such
as a penalty shootout, where one single person becomes a scapegoat and
is made responsible for what happened.” Blatter said that finding a new
method to decide drawn matches was the job of the task force which has
been set up to suggest changes that to the game in time for the 2014
World Cup.

Blatter had previously suggested a more prominent role for penalty
shootouts, saying they could be used to find a winner in group matches
at the World Cup and that drawn knockout games could go straight to
penalties without extra time being played.