ZURICH --Â Without specifying his illness, Sepp Blatter said in excerpts from a television interview that he was near death when hospitalized for stress-related problems this month.
The suspended FIFA president was "between the angels singing and the devil's fire," he told Swiss broadcaster RTS in his first television interview since leaving the hospital on Nov. 12.
"But it was the angels which sang," Blatter said, adding "happily I never lost consciousness" during the 48 hours when most ill.
Parts of the interview were released ahead Wednesday's full broadcast.
The French-language broadcaster said in a news report late Sunday that the 79-year-old Blatter was treated in intensive care for several days.
Blatter acknowledged he had been under "enormous pressure," with personal legal problems arising from a $2 million payment of FIFA money he authorized to Michel Platini in 2011 as backdated salary.
Swiss federal prosecutors opened criminal proceedings against Blatter in September for alleged criminal mismanagement, over the Platini deal and an undervalued sale of Caribbean TV rights for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups.
Blatter was suspended on Oct. 8 by the FIFA ethics committee and is awaiting a full hearing there, likely in December. He faces a ban from soccer of at least several years.
His appeal against the 90-day ban should be heard within days at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Platini faces similar hearings, seeking to revive his stalled campaign to succeed Blatter in the FIFA presidential election on Feb. 26.
Blatter insisted to RTS that Platini, his former protege and the UEFA president, is "an honest man" who should be cleared of wrongdoing.
"If he comes back, he will be elected," Blatter said. "And then if he comes back, I'm coming back also."
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