SEPP BLATTER confirmed yesterday he will stand for a fifth term as Fifa president next year claiming his mission to change football is not finished.

Blatter has been president for the past 16 years. Despite criticism of corruption during his four terms in charge — he handed Qatar the 2022 World Cup and is yet to do anything about appalling working conditions for stadium workers — the 78-year-old feels that he still has more to offer the world of football.

He had been widely expected to stand again despite saying in 2011 that his current term would be his  and then again at a Uefa congress in Paris last year. 

Uefa president Michel Platini was reportedly angered when he learnt Blatter would be stand for a fifth term and subsequently causing the former France midfielder to announce last month he would not stand for the Fifa post.

Blatter said he would officially inform the Fifa executive committee of his plans at the next meeting on September 25 and 26.

He said: “I will inform the executive committee. It’s a question of respect also to say then to the football family: ‘Yes I will be ready. I will be a candidate.”

The Fifa president, who once said that female footballers should “wear tighter shorts and low-cut shirts to create a more female aesthetic and attract more male fans,” has claimed that the backing of the majority of the national associations at the Fifa Congress in Sao Paulo in June had convinced him to keep going.

He added: “You see a mission is never finished. And my mission is not finished.

“Then I got through the last Congress in Sao Paulo not only the impression but the support of the majority, a huge majority of national associations asking: ‘Please go on, be our president also in future’.”

The election will take place at the Fifa Congress next May.

Platini and a number of Uefa countries including England and Scotland have publicly stated they will not support Blatter for a fifth term bid.

But while Blatter “still respects” FA chairman Greg Dyke and called him “a good guy” — Dyke had spoken out against the Fifa president while out in Brazil for the 2014 World Cup — Blatter went on to say that England should take defeat gracefully.

“In football, this game that you start to play at the youngest possible level, you learn discipline, respect and fair play,” he said.

“If you’re at the higher level, you forget that this is discipline, respect and fair play. You’ve forgotten it.

“But, at least, don’t forget that in football, you learn to win but also to lose. So, therefore, I appeal to all those to go back to the essence of football, and then you learn to lose. I have lost a lot of times but, if you lose, then you stay there and you try to be better. And then, stay fair — that’s all.

“Fair play was invented by England, Great Britain — the beautiful game and fair play. So let’s celebrate fair play.”