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FIFA confirms Executive Committee will convene Oct. 20, may delay presidential election

Arnd Wiegmann / Reuters

After it was reported that several members of FIFA's Executive Committee were calling for an emergency meeting following the 90-day suspensions issued to president Sepp Blatter, secretary general Jerome Valcke, and vice-president Michel Platini, the governing body confirmed Friday that a meeting will indeed take place.

Related: FIFA provisionally suspends Blatter, Platini, and Valcke for 90 days

From FIFA's official statement:

FIFA can today confirm that its Executive Committee will convene in Zurich on Tuesday 20 October 2015 for an extraordinary meeting.

Further information will be communicated in due course.

The Press Association points out that David Gill, Wolfgang Niersbach, and Michel D'Hooghe were the members of the Executive Committee pushing for an emergency meeting, and that the committee is being urged to discuss postponing FIFA's presidential election, which is scheduled for Feb. 26, 2016 and will determine the successor to Blatter.

"I am one of the members asking for an emergency meeting of the FIFA ExCo," D'Hooghe said. "At the moment I have no information about an eventual postponing of the election but perhaps this point could be discussed there."

Switzerland's Office of the Attorney General (OAG) opened criminal proceedings against Blatter at the end of September "on suspicion of criminal mismanagement as well as - alternatively - on suspicion of misappropriation" as part of a wider investigation into the corruption scandal that has engulfed FIFA.

Related: Swiss authorities open criminal investigation against Sepp Blatter

Blatter, who incredibly announced back in June that he will be stepping down as president of FIFA, is appealing his 90-day suspension, which - along with the bans issued to Valcke and Platini - stems from the investigation being carried out by the governing body's Independent Ethics Committee.

Platini, meanwhile, is suspected of receiving a disloyal payment of €2 million from Blatter and was heard as a "person asked to provide information" by the OAG.

UEFA issued a statement Thursday saying it stands fully behind its president and "will immediately take all necessary steps to appeal the decision of the FIFA Ethics Committee to clear his name," while Platini issued a separate statement in which he insisted he's determined to challenge for the FIFA presidency.

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