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Washington - A US official on Tuesday denied that Washington had any hand in Sepp Blatter's shock decision to resign as president of FIFA.
Asked if the United States had pushed Blatter out of world football's governing body, the State Department's senior advisor for strategic communications, Marie Harf, laughed and shot back: "No."
"The United States government does not have a position on who the president of FIFA is," Harf told reporters.
The 79-year-old Blatter had faced increasing calls to step aside after the US Department of Justice last week levelled accusations of "rampant, systemic and deep-rooted corruption" against some of the sport's leading officials.
A total of 14 officials and marketing executives have been accused by US investigators of racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.
Blatter himself had not been implicated, but seven officials were arrested in a dawn raid on a Zurich hotel on Wednesday, accused of taking more than $150 million in bribes.
