Sepp Blatter has beaten the biters, spitters and thugs of the game to a title nobody wants. GiveMeSport’s ranking of football’s 30 most hated figures places the disgraced former FIFA president at No.1, above every on-pitch villain the sport has produced.

The pattern is familiar to anyone who has followed the money side of the game: the biggest damage comes from suits, not shirts. Blatter’s presidency ended in a six-year ban in December 2015. He was then handed a second suspension of six years and eight months in March 2021 after FIFA’s ethics committee ruled he had joined former secretary general Jérôme Valcke in awarding himself contractual bonuses tied to World Cups.

His successor at UEFA, Michel Platini, sits at No.4 for the same 2015 case. The Court of Arbitration for Sport cut Platini’s ban from six years to four in May 2016, but he resigned as UEFA president rather than fight on.

Schumacher’s dental-crowns quip still lingers

No.3 on the list is a scene the sport still shows a warning before rerunning. In the 1982 World Cup semi-final in Seville, West Germany goalkeeper Toni Schumacher flattened French substitute Patrick Battiston with a leaping body-check that left the defender unconscious, with damaged vertebrae and missing teeth. The Dutch referee awarded a goal-kick.

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Told after the match that Battiston had lost two teeth, Schumacher’s reply became one of football’s coldest lines.

“If that’s all that’s wrong with him, I’ll pay him the crowns,” the goalkeeper said.

Battiston accepted a personal apology in the years that followed, but the quote has followed Schumacher for more than four decades.

Suárez bit three opponents. Diouf spat at two

Luis Suárez appears at No.15 for a habit no other elite footballer has repeated. The Uruguay striker bit Otman Bakkal for Ajax in November 2010, Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic in April 2013 and Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil. The English FA banned him for 10 matches after the Ivanovic bite; FIFA suspended him for nine internationals and from all football activity for four months after Chiellini.

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El Hadji Diouf sits at No.8 for a similar catalogue with saliva instead of teeth. The former Senegal forward spat at a Celtic supporter during a UEFA Cup tie at Parkhead in March 2003, earning a two-match ban and a fortnight’s wages in fines from Liverpool. He later spat in the face of Portsmouth captain Arjan De Zeeuw.

Di Canio’s Mussolini paragraph

Paolo Di Canio’s place at No.19 rests on his autobiography, in which the former West Ham forward described Benito Mussolini as “basically a very principled, ethical individual” who was “deeply misunderstood”. He has also said, “I am a fascist, not a racist”, a line that resurfaced when Sunderland appointed him as manager in 2013.

John Terry, at No.10, features for a mix of racism allegations and the trophy lift that made a meme of him. Suspended for Chelsea’s 2012 Champions League final against Bayern Munich, he changed out of his suit into full kit for the trophy ceremony. His team-mate Ramires later told FourFourTwo the club had asked all suspended players to be ready for the team photo.

Selected names from the top ten

• 1. Sepp Blatter, former FIFA president
• 2. José Mourinho, manager
• 3. Toni Schumacher, former West Germany goalkeeper
• 4. Michel Platini, former UEFA president
• 6. Cristiano Ronaldo, Portugal forward
• 7. Luciano Moggi, Juventus executive and Calciopoli figure
• 8. El Hadji Diouf, former Liverpool and Bolton forward
• 10. John Terry, former Chelsea captain

The full GiveMeSport ranking runs 30 deep and ends at Sir Alex Ferguson at No.30 for two decades of pressure on referees at Manchester United. Blatter’s second FIFA ban runs six years and eight months from the expiry of the first in October 2021.

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