MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Brazilian Senate will only deal directly with FIFA president Blatter

No FIFA ‘caretaker’, only the boss Blatter

A panel of the Brazilian Senate on Tuesday canceled a planned meeting with FIFA secretary general Jerome Valcke, who last month caused uproar with his outspoken criticism of the country's 2014 World Cup preparations.

Valcke was supposed to have been received by the Senate's education, culture and sports commission but “the meeting was canceled,” said the panel's secretary, Julio Linares.

“The panel will send a letter to FIFA asking that the meeting takes place with FIFA President Sepp Blatter, as was planned and not with Valcke,” he added.

“We do not accept the FIFA’s caretaker. What was approved was a meeting with Blatter, not with his aide. If it was up to me, he would get a kick in his backside” the panel's chairman, Roberto Requiao, was quoted as saying by Globo's news website.

Valcke touched off a firestorm here last month when he suggested the Brazilian organizers of the 2014 World Cup needed a “kick up the backside.”

He and Blatter had to apologize for the remarks, which triggered an angry response from the host country. Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo then said Valcke would no longer be welcome as a FIFA spokesman.

FIFA meeting with the Senate panel and with Rebelo next week was to focus on a bill regulating the World Cup, notably the sale of alcoholic beverages in stadiums.

Sales of alcoholic beverages in sports arenas have been banned in Brazil since 2003, but the World Cup bill will create an exception that had been demanded by world governing body FIFA.

The bill, which would also allow beer to be sold in stadiums during the 2013 Confederations Cup, received near unanimous support in Brazil's House of Deputies last week.

But it has yet to be endorsed by the Senate before being ratified by President Dilma Rousseff.