10 of the most powerful people in world football

#2 Sepp Blatter

Blatter served as Fifa President for 17 years

Sepp Blatter joined Michel Platini in serving an eight-year ban from all things related to football after being found guilty of corruption charges, but love him or hate him, he held the post of President of FIFA between 1998 and 2015.

Though his reign has been filled with allegations, controversies and financial mismanagement, he has also applied many initiatives to better the sport, including the “silver-goal rule”, the automatic World Cup berth for the defending champion and the automatic yellow for shirt removal.

Towards the end of his tenure, he seemed to lose all credibility but still wielded enough power to punish those who were too forceful in their objections.