Sepp Blatter was given a third term as president of world soccer's governing body after standing as the only candidate at today's Fifa Congress.
The Swiss succeeded Joao Havelange after a bitter election campaign against former Uefa president Lennart Johansson in 1998 and was re-elected four years later when he defeated Issa Hayatou, president of the African confederation CAF.
Blatter's second term lasted for five years rather than the usual four when Fifa decided not to end the president's term of office in the same year as the World Cup finals in Germany.
The 71-year-old, the eighth president in Fifa's 103-year history, is expected to remain in charge until at least 2011.
Blatter joined Fifa as technical director in 1975 and was general secretary from 1981 until 1998.
Earlier today, Blatter congratulated the four British associations for swiftly replacing a vice-president who made disparaging remarks about African and Caribbean federations.
Blatter's remarks in front of hundreds of delegates from more than 200 countries came a day after Geoff Thompson of England became Britain's vice-president on the executive committee in place of Scotland's John McBeth.
McBeth, who had been nominated for the position in early February was forced to stand down because of remarks he made to Scottish journalists last week. He had criticised the African and Caribbean federations as well as the English and Blatter himself.
Blatter told delegates that soccer faced four major evils: doping, corruption, cheating and racism - as well as the growing number of cases being taken to civil courts.
"Even today we have racism in football and in this context I would like to congratulate the courageous decision taken by the four British associations not to highlight a member who has recently attacked Caribbean and African nations in declarations which are totally negative and don't correspond to our concept of football," he said.
The English, Scottish, Northern Irish and Welsh FAs decided yesterday that McBeth's position was untenable and after a meeting in a Zurich hotel it was agreed that Thompson would take over. Reuters
