The Guardian view on Sepp Blatter: at last, it’s time to start rebuilding Fifa

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/02/guardian-view-on-sepp-blatter-resignation-fifa

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Just when it seemed he had survived to serve another four-year term, he went. The laws of politics trumped the laws of physics after all. Only a few days ago, it seemed the irresistible force of the FBI’s corruption probe into world football’s governing body had hit an immovable object in the shape of Sepp Blatter’s resistance to quitting as Fifa’s president. But four days’ reflection and doubtless some bitter argument behind closed doors have allowed wiser counsels and the force of reality to prevail. Mr Blatter was movable after all. And today he quit. He should have done it days, weeks, months, even years before now. But he has done the right thing by bowing to the inevitable.

Now, though, he should go – really go. Long-serving and proud leaders who are forced from power often try to delay the final moment. Margaret Thatcher tried it in British politics, clinging on in the face of unavoidable defeat. Now Mr Blatter is trying to shape and control the future and the succession. He wants to delay a special congress at which his successor will be elected until December, perhaps until March next year, almost a year away. This is delusional and wrong, as ill-judged as the claim by Nicolae Ceaușescu, in his penultimate speech as Romanian dictator in 1989, that there would be no reform of his country until “apple trees grew pears”. Until Mr Blatter goes there can be no real progress on the root and branch reform of the whole governing superstructure of world football that is so urgently required to begin the process of rebuilding trust and confidence. He must hand over to an interim president, and go now.

The immediate cause of his decision to resign – only four days after he was re-elected on less than the required two thirds of the vote to serve a fifth term as Fifa president that would have seen him serve an unprecedented 21 years in the job – was not clear. But all day, rumours swirled of a link with a $10m bribe connected to the award of the South Africa World Cup, apparently with the knowledge of the Fifa secretary general Jérôme Valcke and paid to the discredited former Fifa delegate Jack Warner. A letter emerged, the most persuasive link yet between the top echelon of Fifa and corrupt behaviour, and it appears to have spelt the end for Mr Blatter, despite confirmation that the Fifa president was not under investigation by the Swiss attorney general.

The lessons of this protracted debacle will not all be immediately learned. But what is absolutely clear is that Fifa lacked any effective system of internal challenge. Repeated attempts for more than a decade to expel the guilty and clean up the organisation foundered on the power of an unembarrassable leadership to override all external advice, even when it arose from investigations commissioned by Fifa itself. That power rested partly on Mr Blatter’s support among football’s developing nations of Africa, Asia and South America. It is salutary that it was broken not by challenges from investigative reporters, nor by the repeated but ineffectual challenges of Uefa, but by the fact that the reach of the FBI extends to all dealings in US dollars wherever they happen, and most critically the support that was – eventually – forthcoming from the Swiss authorities. Bourgeois propriety finally triumphed over Swiss secrecy. It should not have taken so long.

So Fifa 2.0 must have genuinely strong and effective internal safeguards built in. Even more radically, the business of the World Cup could be divorced from the charitable affair of disbursing money to new footballing nations. What will require greater sensitivity is dealing with the perceptions that the Fifa president encouraged in order to safeguard his position. His claim that he was being ambushed by a western conspiracy will have resonated not only among Fifa clients who may now fear exposure, but also with ordinary delegates and football fans. Great care must be taken that this miserable, damaging affair does not stoke wider geopolitical tensions between the developed and developing world. The Qatari football association may well be feeling anxious tonight. So, more dangerously, will Russia where Putin has already characterised the challenge to Mr Blatter as the West v the Rest. But for now, as the FA chairman Greg Dyke put it, let’s celebrate. Football is the winner.