RIO DE JANEIRO — Sepp Blatter on Wednesday all but declared his intention to run for a fifth term as FIFA’s president, declaring that “my mission is not finished” in a speech to a congress of soccer’s top officials.

Blatter has put off an official announcement of his candidacy for another four-year term until after the World Cup, but he sent his strongest signal yet that he would run when he told the FIFA Congress in São Paulo that “I can tell you I am ready to accompany you in the future.”

The images of Blatter and FIFA have been battered in recent months by revelations of corruption in the bidding for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which have increased the pressure on Blatter, 78, to step aside.

Several top officials in UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, openly called on Blatter on Tuesday to decline to run in next year’s election. They pointed out that in 2011, when he was elected unanimously to a fourth term in a vote later found to have been rife with vote-buying and influence-peddling, he had promised to retire by 2015.