Blatter victory may split game

The Football Association last night poured scorn on Sepp Blatter's re-election as Fifa president here and hinted at a possible future split in world football following a bitter and divisive campaign.

As the 66-year-old Blatter began a second four-year term after crushing Issa Hayatou of Cameroon despite months of allegations over financial mismanagement and corruption, the FA's executive director, David Davies, said a huge opportunity had been lost to radically change the image of world football's governing body.

"We believe that trust in the leadership will be immensely difficult to restore," Davies said. "We will now have to decide within Uefa how things develop because they can't go on as they are."

While Blatter was expected to win despite concern into the way he has run the organisation, the margin of victory – 139-56, more than his defeat of the Lennart Johansson, the president of the European governing body, Uefa four years ago – took the Fifa Congress by surprise.

Although the vote was by secret ballot, it was clear that much of Europe voted for Blatter and that even a significant number of African associations refused to back their own man. After the count, Hayatou quickly left the conference hall, speeding away in a limousine.

After the figures were read out, it was evident that many smaller nations had voted with their wallets. When he came to power four years ago, Blatter promised every federation $250,000 (about £175,000) a year, and backed that up with more hand-outs as part of his "Goal" project. "The delegates came here with their minds made up," one African member of Fifa's executive committee said. "Nothing that happened could have made them change their minds."

Instead of a traditional Congress opening address, South Korea's Chung Moon-Jong, one of Blatter's fiercest critics, had made a last-ditch effort to gain support for Hayatou, blaming Blatter for Fifa's crisis.

Blatter was taken aback and a tirade of barbed remarks from supporters of both candidates followed. David Will, Britain's most senior Fifa official and chairman of the audit committee set up to examine Fifa's finances before being suspended by Blatter, said it was only because Fifa was registered as an association, rather than a company, that it was not legally bound to declare itself insolvent.

He was supported by the FA's chief executive, Adam Crozier, who warned that Fifa's financial state would get worse. "The governing body of football can only govern through trust but, as we have all witnessed, that trust is fundamentally broken," Crozier said. But the comments of both men fell on deaf ears as the momentum shifted away from Hayatou.

The biggest loser was arguably Fifa's general secretary, Michel Zen Ruffinen. It was his report questioning the way Fifa was being managed which prompted 11 members of the executive committee to launch a complaint in the Swiss courts last month. After the election result, Zen Ruffinen conceded he would soon be shown the door.

"I knew that if Mr Blatter was re-elected, I would be in trouble as [he] doesn't need a general secretary," he said. "He seems to need much more power than a normal president."

Blatter virtually acknowledged that Zen Ruffinen would soon be out of a job. "The secretary says he is in trouble, and he is right," Blatter said. "He is in big trouble."