Anatomy of an (un)professional apologizer: The case of former FIFA President Sepp Blatter

In his time as FIFA President, Sepp Blatter became an increasingly controversial figure, not least because of his need to repeatedly apologise for unprofessional and unethical comments on sensitive political and social issues within football and for overseeing controversial decisions taken by the FIFA executive committee in the sphere of geopolitics. In spite of this, Blatter survived at his post for seventeen years. Referring to an established taxonomy of the component parts of an apology, this paper attempts to assess two of Blatter’s performances as an apologizer. In line with more recent orientations within this branch of (im)politeness studies, the analysis also recognizes that apologies cannot be viewed as linguistic performances alone but should also be investigated as events in which evaluation plays an important part. To that end, as part of a more integrated, discursive approach, qualitative analysis of two official apologies for three particularly sensitive issues are compared with specific evaluations of them. The findings of the analysis indicate divergences in the evaluations and invite reflections on the role this may have played in Blatter’s survival at his post and his continuing unprofessional behaviour