German FA suggests ending one country, one vote system

The proposal was part of a 10-point plan to clean up FIFA that Niersbach sent in an open letter to his country's 26,000 registered football clubs on Wednesday.

Currently, each of FIFA's 209 member associations has one vote in the presidential election, meaning that countries such as Germany and Brazil have the same voting power as tiny nations such as Liechtenstein and Antigua.

"I am basically in favour of this democratic participation but I think a certain weight of each vote based on the size and sporting relevance of the federations would be going in the right direction," said Niersbach.

The proposal is likely to increase fears among African, Asian and Latin American countries that Europe may use the FIFA crisis as a chance for a power grab.

"Just like any committed amateur player I am shocked by the daily news about new corruption allegations," said Niersbach in the introduction to his plan.

"I am stunned, just like any club representative, by these allegations about personal enrichment of some officials."

Niersbach said that criminal behaviour needed to be "hunted down" and all corruption allegations cleared up.

He called for extra integrity checks before members could take their places on the executive committee and suggested limiting the FIFA president to a maximum of 12 years' in office.

He also proposed the executive committee members be elected by the FIFA Congress, rather than chosen by their respective continental confederations.

For the awarding of hosting rights for the World Cup, he said that technically weak bids should be eliminated before the final vote takes place.

"If FIFA had deployed this process then Qatar, with the weakest technical evaluation, would not even have reached the vote," he said, referring to decision to award the 2022 World Cup to the Gulf state.