Zurich, May 29 (IANS): The FIFA presidency race entered the second round of voting as incumbent chief Sepp Blatter failed to get a two-thirds majority, garnering only 133 votes out out of 209.

Blatter's lone rival Jordanian Prince Ali bin al-Hussein got 73 votes as only 206 out of 209 member associations voted at the FIFA Congress here on Friday. The 79-year-old Blatter now requires only a simple majority, that is 105 votes to be re-elected president for the fifth consecutive time of the world governing body of football, where he has been at the helm since 1998.

The result comes in the wake of the graft scandal that rocket the footballing world when Swiss law enforcement authorities swooped down on a hotel here on Wednesday and arrested seven FIFA officials, including two vice-presidents.

This was done because of a request from the US Justice Department which said that 14 people, including two current FIFA vice-presidents, were being charged with "racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies, among other offences, in connection with the defendants' participation in a 24-year scheme, since the 1990s, to enrich themselves through the corruption of international football".

In explaining why the US Justice Department was prosecuting leaders of FIFA, Attorney General Loretta Lynch had said the defendants and their co-conspirators partially planned their scheme in the US, used the US banking system to pay bribes and "planned to profit from their scheme in large part through promotional efforts directed at the growing US market for football".