Due to the brutality in the 1967 edition, FIFA was called into providing penalties and regulating the tournament. However, FIFA stated that it could not stipulate regulations in a competition that it did not organise. Though the competition was endorsed by UEFA and CONMEBOL, René Courte, FIFA's General Sub-Secretary, wrote an article shortly afterwards (1967) stating that FIFA viewed the competition as a "European-South American friendly match". Courte's statement was endorsed by then–FIFA president Sir Stanley Rous, who then stated that FIFA saw the Intercontinental Cup as a friendly match. After these controversial statements, Madrid newspaper "ABC" then pointed out that, though the Intercontinental Cup was not endorsed by FIFA, it was endorsed by UEFA and CONMEBOL, therefore being an "intercontinental jurisdiction" cup. However, with the Asian and North-Central-American/Caribbean club competitions in place, FIFA opened the idea of supervising the Intercontinental Cup if it included those confederations, which was met with a negative response from its participating confederations, UEFA and CONMEBOL. According to Stanley Rous, CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation had requested, in 1967, their participation in the Intercontinental Cup, which was rejected by UEFA and CONMEBOL. In 1970, the FIFA Executive Committee gathering put forward, unsuccessfully, a proposal for the expansion of the Intercontinental Cup into a Club World Cup with representative clubs of every existing continental confederation. Nevertheless, some European champions started to decline participation in the tournament after the events of 1969.