No matter what Sepp Blatter hears, in his world he is always in the right Fifth term: Blatter will almost certainly be re-elected president of FIFA tomorrow

London Evening Standard

At tea time tomorrow, Sepp Blatter will almost certainly be re-elected president of FIFA for a fifth term. This seems astonishing given that FIFA are now engulfed in the worst crisis in their history.



So how can the 79-year-old, under whose watch much of the alleged bribery took place, not be forced to fall on his sword? The answer lies in the way Blatter has moulded the organisation so that when things go well he gets all the credit but when there is scandal he is the innocent victim of other people’s machinations, even if some of the perpetrators may have been his closest associates for years and he had previously held them up as exemplary men.



The last 24 hours in Zurich illustrate how Blatter has perfected the art of turning from hero, who can sense every change the game needs, to blameless victim, unaware of the dreadful things going on under his very nose. Take the arrest of seven high-ranking FIFA officials in Zurich yesterday having been accused, according to US attorney general Loretta Lynch, “of corrupting the business of worldwide soccer to serve their interests and to enrich themselves,” a process that had been going on for almost a quarter of a century. Three of them are on the executive that helps Blatter run FIFA and one, Jeffrey Webb, has been touted as a possible successor who only a few weeks ago the Swiss was praising extravagantly.