EPL CEO Richard Scudamore said that FIFA's next leader should be someone with a corporate background who "transcends the past," according to the BBC. A meeting of FIFA Congress, due to be held in December, "will select a new president" after incumbent Sepp Blatter called for "profound restructuring." Scudamore said, "Quite frankly we need some new names and new thinking. The thing has to change. Everybody's been saying it for some time. Clearly this a seismic shift in the dynamic." Scudamore "wants to see new blood given a chance." He added, "In some ways it almost needs a corporate, proper businessperson, as opposed to a football politician. ... It's right that the game is run on a one country, one vote basis, I don't think there's one country that's bigger than any other, despite anybody's history. Therefore you need a unifying candidate that somehow transcends the past" (BBC, 6/30).
'CLEAN CONSCIENCE': The London GUARDIAN reported Blatter warned that anyone who associates him with the recent scandal at FIFA "should go to jail" and insisted that "he will go to heaven one day." Blatter "is adamant that he has not committed any crime and revealed that he has been relying on his strong Christian faith to help him through the crisis." Blatter: "I have a clean conscience. ... I am open to correct or positive criticism. I can use that to reconsider if I need to change in the future. But if anybody calls me corrupt because FIFA is corrupt, I can only shake my head. Everybody who says something like that should go to jail" (GUARDIAN, 7/1).
