"I'll be back," declared a defiant Sepp Blatter after he was banned from football for eight years - and they are certainly hoping so in China, where a £17 million museum decked with his images, words and even his statue is due to open next month, reports the news agency .

The disgraced Fifa president has been engaged in a love affair with China since he declared the country the true birthplace of football in 2000 - and the enormous National Football Museum in Linzi, in the eastern Shandong province, is a shrine to that relationship.

And the first room exhibits charting China’s version of how the game progressed through thousands of years, is dedicated to Blatter and other suited football dignitaries.

Pride of place in the room, among pictures of the Swiss beaming with Chinese sports officials, is a comment he made at a press conference not long after the start of his 17-year tenure as the head of Fifa declaring that "football originated in China".

bbabo.Net