Blatter the unsinkable amid FIFA’s corruption storm

The small Swiss town where he grew up is surrounded by mountains – but the summit of Sepp Blatter’s destiny was not Alpine, rather the peak of the world’s dominant sport. His election as FIFA’s president in 1998 followed decades of climbing the sports management ladder – first in ice hockey, and then within football’s governing body itself, beginning as its technical director. Seventeen years later he presides over a glitzy multi-billion dollar global industry. But in the words of the French paper l’Equipe, so rotten has FIFA become that the noxious stench of its overflowing sewers is impossible to avoid. In recent years investigations by several of the world’s leading publications such as The Sunday Times have presented detailed allegations of corruption – especially of money changing hands in return for favours from highly influential FIFA officials. A Swiss paper called the man at the top “the dark prince of football, the godfather, Don Blatterone” – but no inquiry has ever linked him personally to bribes. Crucially, across Planet Football he was gradually becoming untouchable. By carefully cultivating contacts and nurturing development in places far from his Swiss roots, Blatter’s powerbase grew – in Asia, South America, and above all in Africa: delirious as he delivered the continent’s first World Cup, in South Africa in 2010. His commitment to reform has been questioned: in 2011 FIFA ignored recommendations from a panel whose work it had commissioned – over cash disclosure, and for fixed terms and age limits for officials. Blatter said then he still felt full of energy and had work to finish at the helm of FIFA. Four years later, l’Equipe has likened FIFA’s top brass to “Conan the Barbarian played out in three-piece suits by a bunch of pensioners cavorting in five-star palaces”. Almost a third of FIFA’s executive who awarded the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar have since resigned, been sacked or are under investigation. Amid the storm, although severely buffeted, Blatter himself was described as unsinkable.