Sepp Blatter has been lauded as a combination of Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela, Moses, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King.
Just for good measure, the Fifa president was also described as “the father of football” as the Caribbean and North and Central American countries met for the Concacaf congress.
Blatter received pledges of support from 10 federations as the congress quickly turned from a business meeting into a rally to back the incumbent president of football’s world governing body.
There were no speeches in favour of any of the opposing candidates, the former Portugal international Luís Figo, the Dutch Football Association president, Michael van Praag, and the Jordanian Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein, all of whom were present as observers.
“I think Concacaf membership is sending a clear message that we continue to support president Blatter,” said the body’s president, Jeffrey Webb, who was later re-elected, unopposed. The Fifa presidential election will take place in Zurich on 29 May.
It was the Trinidad & Tobago FA president, Raymond Tim Kee, who praised Blatter as the “father of football”, while the president of the Dominican Republic federation, Osiris Guzman, compared the 79-year-old Swiss to Moses, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Martin Luther King as well as Jesus and Mandela.
Guzman was suspended by Fifa in 2011 for 30 days and fined following an ethics committee investigation into the allegations surrounding the cash for votes scandal at the last Fifa presidential election.
Figo was unhappy with the way the congress proceeded. “When some speak and others are silenced, democracy and football lose. Elections are, per definition, a democratic process. Otherwise they are not elections,” Figo said.