"Show African football all the great appreciation and respect it deserves" (Joseph Blatter, FIFA)

"When we travel to Cairo (EGY) for the CAF Congress next week (07/04/2015), we must show African football all the great appreciation and respect it deserves," writes Joseph Blatter, FIFA president, in a column entitled "The Football Continent", and published in The FIFA Weekly magazine on 03/04/2015.

"Nowadays the pulse of African football is so strong that the major European and Asian leagues would be far worse off without it. Thanks to their huge reservoir of talent, the African clubs and associations make a crucial contribution to the attractiveness of global football," added Blatter, who will be candidate, on 29/05/2015 in Zurich (SUI) for a fifth term as the head of FIFA, a position he has held since 08/06/1998.

He demanded a redistribution of seats allocated in final World Cup in the same FIFA magazine on 04/07/2014: "Mathematically, Africa has a definite handicap. Although CAF counts exactly as many members (54) as UEFA, it is represented by only five nations in the World Cup, against 13 for Europe (in 2018, UEFA will have 14 places for Europe, with Russia qualified…