"No matter how close to home these investigations get, this is the difficult path we must follow if we are serious about change," Sepp Blatter wrote in Fifa Weekly referring to the US justice department and Swiss authorities investigations. Boy, even Blatter would not have envisaged how close those "investigations" would hit, would he?
The man who has seemed unconquerable and unflappable, with that ridiculous ability to hover above everyone and everything, as scandal and corruption engulfed all around him, has finally come under the crossfire himself.
With the Swiss Attorney General opening investigations over a payment made to Michel Platini – doesn't look like a great candidate for the next Fifa president now, does he? – in 2011, Blatter and that sanctimonious talk of his is finally at an end.
Blatter had, and always has, insisted, even when he was forced to step down after the US justice department and Swiss authorities began investigations into alleged corruption and fraud, he was clean; that he had done absolutely nothing wrong, and that even he cannot stop a few "bad apples" from siphoning out money from the extravagantly rich organisation.
But then, on Friday, all that changed – Blatter found himself ducking for cover in the country he had ruled for 17 years, as the Swiss authorities decided to make their move, seizing all of the Fifa president's computers, which in turn caused the governing body to cancel a scheduled press conference.
Yes, nothing might come out of this investigation, and yes, Blatter was about to step down anyway – albeit sometime next year – but the fact that the "Fifa corruption scandal" has finally knocked on the door of the man who has been at the helm of football's governing body for 17 years is pretty groundbreaking, so grounbreaking that we might actually have hope of a complete cleansing of Fifa before the next man takes charge; so grounbreaking that the beautiful game will finally have a governing body worthy of the sport.
If there is any organisation that needs cleaning from top to bottom, it is Fifa, and the sooner that happens, the better. Platini taking over as the president, you feel, will change little, so will most of the other candidates who have put their hands up – plenty of the former footballers, chief of them being Zico, have found little to no support, because at the end of it, if you do not have political skills, you will not make it big at Fifa.
But, maybe now is the time for change; to bring in a footballing man untouched by all this scandal and corruption; someone respected in world football; someone who has been there and done it all.
Maybe an Arsene Wenger or a Sir Alex Ferguson can do the job, but then there is little to no chance of either of these two elder statesmen of the game wanting to touch Fifa with even a bargepole is there? Such is the state of affairs at the most powerful sporting body in the world.
And the only way to change that feeling is by starting a cleansing ritual – no, not one of those – which ensures every little weed of corruption and corrupt official is pushed out of that stained Fifa door, so that, finally, someone worthy can start afresh and restore the faith, which has been non-existent for quite a while now, in football fans around the world.
