Sepp Blatter has been re-elected for a fifth term as president of FIFA.

The 79-year-old defeated his rival, the Jordanian Prince Ali Bin al-Hussein, to cheers from his supporters. Blatter polled 133 votes to Prince Ali’s 73, which would have been enough to take the contest to a potential second round but his 39-year-old challenger withdrew.

Blatter has weathered the storm in the short term but the result leaves him presiding over a split Fifa as he faces the biggest self-inflicted crisis in its 111-year history. “For the next four years I will be in command of this boat called Fifa and we will bring it back ashore, we will bring it back to the beach,” he said, again promising to make this four year term his last. “The age is no problem. You have people that are 50 who look old.”

European football’s governing body Uefa will again loudly demand reform.

Its executives meet in Berlin next weekend before the Champions League final and were in militant mood after Blatter triumphed over his younger rival, who had promised to repair Fifa’s battered reputation and serve for only one four-year term.

“Those who voted for Prince Ali, I congratulate you, he is a good candidate. But I am now the president of everybody.”

England and their UEFA counterparts are considering pulling out of the 2018 World Cup if Sepp Blatter is re-elected as FIFA president.

Blatter will discover if he is to stay on as FIFA president for a fifth, four-year term as Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein goes up against the Swiss when the governing body holds its voting for the role on Friday.

Sepp Blatter will move forward with his bid for a fifth term as FIFA president despite the latest series of scandals.

UEFA, European football’s governing body, ruled out seeking a postponement of Friday’s election and will instead back Blatter’s challenger, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan.

Blatter made his decision to stay after a series crisis meetings at Fifa HQ with representatives of the six regional football confederations. He rejected a face-to-face demand from the president of UEFA, Michel Platini, for his resignation.

“I asked him to resign: enough is enough, Sepp. He listened to me but he told me it is too late,” Platini told a news conference in Zurich. Platini said he was “disgusted” and “sickened” by the scandal gripping the organisation.

Six FIFA officials have been arrested in Switzerland and will be detained pending extradition at the request of United States' authorities.

In a statement Wednesday, the FOJ says US authorities suspect the officials of having received of paid bribes totalling millions of dollars.

The charges include wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering, and officials said they targeted members of Fifa’s powerful executive committee, which wields enormous power and does its business largely in secret.

The arrests came at the five-star Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich ahead of FIFA's elections on Friday.

The Swiss authorities seized “electronic data and documents” in a raid on FIFA headquarters. Bank documents had earlier been collected from various Swiss financial institutions. Police will question 10 members of the Fifa executive committee who took part in the World Cup votes. The 10, all still current members of Fifa’s ExCo, include senior vice-president Issa Hayatou of Cameroon and Vitaly Mutko, Russia’s sports minister who is head of the country’s 2018 World Cup organising committee. The others are Angel Maria Villar Llona (Spain), Michel D’Hooghe (Belgium), Senes Erzik (Turkey), Worawi Makudi (Thailand), Marios Lefkaritis (Cyprus), Jacques Anouma (Ivory Coast), Rafael Salguero(Guatemala) and Hany Abo Rida (Egypt).

"We welcome the actions and the investigations by the US and Swiss authorities," said Sepp Blatter in a statement.

Jurgen Klinsmann wants the United States to play a proactive style in the Gold Cup.

“We have a responsibility to win our big tournaments," said Klinsmann. "Like the Gold Cup this summer, that will hopefully take us to the Confederations Cup in 2017. But you have your development situations too. Right now we’re in a more developmental period. Of course we want to win all of our friendly games, but they give us the opportunity to develop players too. I can ask the question ‘how good are you?’ ‘Do you understand what it means to play at the international level?’ We have players in Europe and South America and Mexico too. The only way to meld them together is to bring them in and let them swim in the cold water.”

Klinsmann's goal is for the United States to reach the semifinals of the World Cup in 2018.

"We set the bar very high because we want to explain to the players what it really takes to get to a semi-final. We left Ghana and Portugal behind us in Brazil 2014 and we almost drew with Germany and almost beat Belgium too. These are all big names. So the players understand they can actually beat big nations if everything goes well on that particular day. Now we need to educate the players what to do when the Round of 16 is over. We have to examine what it takes to win a quarterfinal, to get into a semi-final. A lot of consistency is required. The path over the next three and half years is to explain constantly to the players that anything is possible. You can do this, but you have to learn to become a tournament team."

Klinsmann was also asked what qualities the American players still need to work on.