FIFA urges Blatter to compensate sacked Cooper

Senior figures within FIFA are urging president Sepp Blatter to award compensation to Keith Cooper, who was unceremoniously sacked as communications director of football’s world governing body after the World Cup.

Cooper had his contract terminated as part of the fall out from the bitter presidential election won by Blatter in May.

Several other long-serving FIFA officials also lost their jobs, as did general secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen.

Unlike Zen-Ruffinen and several other officials in the past however, Cooper was not given any generous compensation package and merely had his contract paid up to the end of the year.

A popular and widely-respected figure who was renowned for remaining independent of FIFA’s tangled politics, Cooper, from Liverpool, has won the support of several influential members of FIFA’s executive committee.

They have approached Blatter in the last week to plead for he and several other officials who have been fired to be adequately compensated.

One FIFA member said: “The view has been passed on to Mr Blatter that Keith Cooper and several other employees who had spent many years at FIFA should be adequately compensated.”

In the past, Blatter has personally intervened to give employees a large pay-off.

Zen-Ruffinen was understood to have negotiated a huge pay-off in return for his resignation.