FIFA reform campaigner Damian Collins calls for further investigation

Updated on: 22 December,2015 08:00 AM IST |
AFP |

FIFA reform campaigner Damian Collins has welcomed the eight-year bans for Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini but called for continued investigation

British MP Damian Collins

London: FIFA reform campaigner Damian Collins has welcomed the eight-year bans for Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini but called for continued investigation.

British MP Damian Collins

The pair have been punished by FIFA's ethics committee judge Hans-Joachim Eckert for a "disloyal payment" of 2million Swiss francs (£1.3million) to Platini which was signed off by Blatter.

The bans are immediate and ends UEFA president Platini's slim hopes of running for the FIFA presidency on February 26. Collins, a member of the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport, said the bans must be followed by further reform.

"We will see in the next few months whether this is the end of FIFA too. They have to implement wide-ranging reforms of the organisation, led by an independent outside body"" the MP told Sky Sports News.

"The fish rots from the head down and we know how rotten the head of FIFA was and we now have to find out just how much of the organisation has been infected.

They have outlined changes they want to put to the FIFA congress in February, a lot of those changes are a step in the right direction. What there has to be is proper independent scrutiny of what FIFA does and stop the president of FIFA holding the same power that Sepp Blatter held in the past."