51st FIFA Congress and president of the European football governing body UEFA Lennart Johansson considered the favourite to win. Johansson's rival was the Swiss-German football executive Joseph "Sepp" Blatter who had previously been an executive at the Swiss watch manufactures Longines and had served as the general secretary of FIFA since 1981. The first round of voting in the election did not produce a clear victor, with Blatter receiving 111 votes to Johansson's 80, but Johansson conceded victory. 51st FIFA Congress The 51st FIFA Congress was held between 6 and 8 June 1998, at the Equinox congress hall in Paris, France, just before
Sepp Blatter World Cup seeding, when he interrupted a "one-minute silence" for former South-African president Nelson Mandela, who died the day before, after eleven seconds. Michael van Praag, the chairman of the Royal Dutch Football Association, called his behavior "preposterous" and expressed the hope Blatter would not be reelected in 2015. Blatter has been publicly heckled, at the World Cup in Seoul and the Confederations Cup in Frankfurt, both in 2006, in his home town of Visp in 2011, at the 2012 Women's Olympic Football Final Medal Ceremony, and at the opening of Confederations Cup match in 2013. In order to avoid