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Sepp Blatter has told World Cup referees to protect the players and clamp down hard on elbowing.

FIFA plans a new independent ethics committee and the introduction of professional referees in a bid to fight widespread corruption.

Racist soccer spectators should be identified in the crowd and then shamed in public in the middle of the pitch while the match they have tarnished is suspended, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on Sunday.

FIFA gave president Sepp Blatter a one-year contract extension and, also unanimously, approved revised statutes, the rules that govern world soccer's governing body, at its Extraordinary Congress on Sunday.

The next edition of the controversial FIFA Club World Championship is likely to be held in Japan in 2005, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said on Sunday.

FIFA's Executive Committee has rejected a proposal to expand the 2006 World Cup finals to 36 teams, but to do so backtracked on its promise to give Oceania an automatic place in the tournament.

FIFA agreed to expand the 2006 World Cup in Germany to an unprecedented 36 teams following a heated seven-hour meeting of its executive committee on Saturday.

Bayern Munich's Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Manchester United's Peter Kenyon will lead calls for a downgrading, or even cancellation, of the Confederations Cup when they meet FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Friday.