Sepp Blatter has left hospital after what was described as a “small emotional breakdown”.
The outgoing FIFA president, currently suspended from his duties or 90 days amid a corruption scandal, was admitted to hospital in Zurich for a check-up due to stress last week.
“He is fine, but he has just been told to relax for a few days,” said his advisor Klaus Stoehlker, who added that 79-year-old Blatter was preparing to continue his fight against his suspension.
Blatter was re-elected Fifa president in May just after the corruption scandal erupted with police raids on a hotel used by top FIFA officials. Four days later, he announced he would relinquish his mandate and called a new Congress, in Zurich in February, to choose his successor.
Stoehlker said: “He is a fighter and he will fight until the last moment. He will fight for two things finally: that FIFA is choosing a successor who goes on fulfilling his plans by developing FIFA globally to support all these activities he has started – women’s football and many other things at football – and there I think he wants a new candidate, a new president going in, doing it the same way.
“The second is his legacy, he is fighting for his legacy, I think there is a 40 years history behind and football today is a business of 300 billion U.S. dollars and with 1.6 billion fans – that’s more than Facebook – and I think he has a legacy and he has started to build it up.
“He is the president, he says and he is deeply convinced. He is elected by the Congress, by the 209 members of the Congress and that’s why he says ‘there is no commission who can suspend me because I am the elected president, it’s a democratic decision to elect a president and only another democratic decision can take another choice’.”
In September, the Swiss attorney general’s office opened criminal proceedings against Blatter over a 2 million Swiss franc ($2.1m) payment he authorised to Uefa president Michel Platini, who has also been suspended.
Both men have denied wrongdoing and have appealed to Fifa’s Appeal Committee.
