The former Real Madrid and Barcelona player has thrown his hat in to the ring for the FIFA presidential race to stand against Sepp Blatter.

Speaking exclusively to CNN, he revealed that the institution had been hit by too many scandals in recent times and that the image of the game had been brought in to disrepute as a result. Announcing his candidacy, he said "I care about football, so what I'm seeing regarding the image of FIFA - not only now but in the past years - I don't like it. If you search FIFA on the internet you see the first word that comes out: scandal - not positive words. It's that we have to change first and try to improve the image of FIFA. Football deserves much better than this."

Figo is not the first former player to enter the race either, as David Ginola has also been in the spotlight recently (for Paddy Power) stating the he'll also stand, but Figo's credentials seem to be a bit more legitimate, as he has been working with Inter Milan and the Portuguese national team, so he meets FIFA's rule that states all candidates must have played an active role in association football for two of the five years, and he has already received letters of support from the necessary five associations needed to run.

With a large number of candidates in the running now, we will need to wait and see who qualifies and although the official closing date for candidacy is this Thursday (January 29th), it may well run into next week as the letters from the associations merely need to be postmarked with the date of the deadline, rather than arriving on it.

Via CNN