Call for justice: Romario wants Federation Internationale de Football Association president Sepp Blatter arrested

Now a Brazilian senator with an anti-corruption stance, the 1994 World Cup winning striker was asked his thoughts on the upcoming leadership election at FIFA, world football’s governing body, where Platini is bidding to succeed Blatter.

FIFA’s final executive committee meeting of the year traditionally takes place in the same country as the Club World Cup tournament, which is returning to Japan in December after being held in Abu Dhabi and Morocco in previous years.

A new president is to be elected on February 26 at an extraordinary congress in Zurich.

But the 79-year-old would be more vulnerable to an extradition request if he left his native Switzerland.

National Mirror learnt that Pinnick briefed Hayatou on Chief Uzor Orji- Kalu and Chief Segun Odegbami’s Federation Internationale de Football Association presidential aspirations and the various development programmes of the NFF, which the Camerounian said he was very much aware of. Del Nero chairs that committee, which reportedly met on Monday without him. Valcke denies wrongdoing.

Tashima Khozo, a Japanese member of FIFA’s executive committee, said he also hadn’t heard anything official about the place of the committee’s next meeting.

Since the corruption charges Blatter’s only official trip overseas has been to Russian Federation for the World Cup qualifying draw in St Petersburg in late July.

The 70-year-old has been critical of the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, and has repeatedly said that Qatar was “a cancer on world football”, an opinion he first voiced in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in April 2013.

UEFA has cited support for its president Platini from voters in four of FIFA’s six continental bodies, though not Africa where Blatter traditionally had a strong base.

Ethics prosecutor Cornel Borbely and judge Joachim Eckert want the power, in some cases, to confirm who is under investigation and publish more detail in their verdicts.