Opinion To fix Fifa

Sepp Blatter

Just days after his re-election as Fifa president for a fifth consecutive term, in a surprise move, Sepp Blatter resigned from his post on Tuesday night, accurately noting that he no longer has “a mandate from the entire world of football”, which includes fans and players. The world of sport was thrown into turmoil last week, after the US and Swiss authorities collaborated to arrest several Fifa officials on account of systemic corruption. In the days since that first dramatic raid at a luxury Zurich hotel, the ongoing probe into the working of the most powerful sporting body has widened. It has now spread to engulf Blatter’s right-hand man, Jerome Valcke, which could have been the catalyst for Blatter abandoning his defiant position. Now, reports say, Blatter himself is under investigation.

The labyrinthine network of kickbacks and bribes uncovered by the US justice department will probably take months, if not years, to fully unravel. But, more immediately, Fifa has a mammoth task ahead, to assuage the concerns of stakeholders, such as national football associations and clubs, while working to regain the trust of football fans. With the president under whose watch such flagrant graft was allegedly allowed to occur still in charge, the process of reform could not have begun with any degree of credibility. Blatter’s resignation is thus an important and necessary first step to stemming the rot.

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But major challenges remain. Blatter may be gone, but the organisational structure he created — which allegedly enabled and encouraged the widescale corruption — continues to limp on. In the first order of business, a new president must be elected, preferably one with the determination and ambition to address the institutional factors that lie at the heart of Fifa’s troubles, such as expanding representation to include fan and player representatives.