By Owen Gib­son/ The Guardian

Em­bat­tled Fi­fa pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter is on the verge of be­ing sus­pend­ed from foot­ball, af­ter a long­time ad­vis­er con­firmed the in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry arm of Fi­fa's ethics com­mit­tee had rec­om­mend­ed the sanc­tion.

The de­ci­sion, which still needs to be rat­i­fied by the ad­ju­di­ca­to­ry cham­ber of the ethics com­mit­tee led by Ger­man judge Hans-Joachim Eck­ert, would see Blat­ter sus­pend­ed un­til ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

Blat­ter has been un­der risk of sus­pen­sion af­ter the ethics com­mit­tee opened pro­ceed­ings in­to claims that he mis-sold a World Cup TV rights con­tract to dis­graced for­mer Fi­fa of­fi­cial Jack Warn­er in 2006 and made a "dis­loy­al pay­ment" of �1.3m to Ue­fa pres­i­dent Michel Pla­ti­ni in 2011. Klaus St�hlk­er, a Zurich-based PR man, and oth­er Fi­fa sources said that the in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry cham­ber of the ethics com­mit­tee, chaired by Cor­nel Borb�ly, has rec­om­mend­ed that Blat­ter be sus­pend­ed pro­vi­sion­al­ly for 90 days.

"What we know is that pres­i­dent Blat­ter was told he could be sus­pend­ed for 90 days. The ethics com­mit­tee has not tak­en any key de­ci­sions, they are wait­ing for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions. There is no guilt im­pugned," said St�hlk­er. "They put the ball to Mr Lauber in Switzer­land. He is now in po­si­tion for fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion. At least pres­i­dent Blat­ter has not flown away from his throne but is still in pow­er. It's a very dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion. It's not good for glob­al foot­ball."

Michael Lauber is the Swiss at­tor­ney gen­er­al who last month said that Blat­ter was fac­ing crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion over the Warn­er con­tract and the pay­ment to Pla­ti­ni, whose fate is al­so in the hands of the ethics com­mit­tee.

Blat­ter had promised to quit next Feb­ru­ary in the wake of an avalanche of cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions but the move could ef­fec­tive­ly end his 17-year tenure as Fi­fa pres­i­dent and four decades at the heart of foot­ball's glob­al gov­ern­ing body.

St�hlk­er, a Blat­ter loy­al­ist, said that his Fi­fa ca­reer was not nec­es­sar­i­ly over. "He is qui­et, he is re­luc­tant, he is ful­ly pre­pared to take his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties," he told the Guardian. "He is the on­ly one who can lead Fi­fa. The pic­ture for 90 days is not pleas­ant."

Fi­fa has been in tur­moil since May, when a se­ries of dawn raids her­ald­ed the worst cri­sis in its his­to­ry and US pros­e­cu­tors in­dict­ed 14 in­di­vid­u­als, in­clud­ing nine cur­rent or for­mer Fi­fa of­fi­cials, on charges of mon­ey laun­der­ing, rack­e­teer­ing and cor­rup­tion.