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Russia World Cup not affected by change of FIFA president, says sports minister

Xinhua, July 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

Russia will not lose the 2018 World Cup whoever succeeds Sepp Blatter as the FIFA president, Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko said on Wednesday.

Blatter announced his decision to step down last month in the aftermath of U.S. and Swiss investigations into FIFA corruption allegations, including the voting for the 2018 and 2022 (Qatar) World Cups.

Mutko, a member of the FIFA executive committee, was confident that any new president would give "full support" to Russia's World Cup.

"It's not Russia's project. It's FIFA's project. No change in the management can ever change anything," Mutko said through an interpreter at a briefing to foreign journalists assembling in Moscow for a tour of the 11 World Cup cities.

"I see no threat here," he added.

FIFA's executive committee will meet on July 20 in Zurich to decide when a new presidential election will be held.

Russia has supported Blatter over the years and Mutko praised the FIFA chief as "a world class official who has made the organization a world class one."

"I know many federations that could interest FBI as well. It's not a worst organization," Mutko said of the FBI probing without elaborating, "(It has) 209 countries (and regions) and many confederations. Someone can be corrupt but what does Blatter have to do with this? I see there's a certain goal."

"Why didn't we support Blatter? We don't see any reason not to support him," He added.

But Mutko admitted that the image of football has been derogated and the sport "need to reclaim the trust".

"Football will be able to win back the trust if someone doesn't have a goal to kill football. Football doesn't belong to anyone. It belongs to all of us," he said. Endi