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Sepp Blatter: From Defiant to Defeated in Four Fateful Days
JUNE 2, 2015

It must have been some sort of rotten long weekend for Sepp Blatter for him to decide, just days after his re-election Friday as FIFA’s president, that he didn’t want to run world soccer anymore, after all.

Only four short days before, Blatter was giving his acceptance speech after winning his fifth term, chest out and nearly doing the jig while blathering on about being the captain of FIFA’s ship. He said he would guide that ship through rocky waters to bring it safely into shore, where there would be beach soccer. Or something. Trust me, it was hard to follow, although that made it especially entertaining.

In the mind of Blatter, who has run FIFA like a dictator for the past 17 years and seemed to be eagerly anticipating four more, what could possibly be so wonderful as another four years of his leadership?

Yet something happened between Friday and Tuesday, when he resigned. Something terrible enough and worrisome enough to send Blatter running for the hills, just days after he won the election in a landslide, and just ahead of investigators from the United States Justice Department.

You can imagine how that fateful series of days might have begun.

There Blatter was on Friday, sitting in bed as the weekend kicked off, rehashing the impromptu lines from his speech — “I am the president of everybody!” — before his wife told him to shut up and go to sleep already.

We’ve all experienced how an amazing weekend can crumble before our very eyes. Great week on the job. A few days to bask in your accomplishments. (Blatter took a day to preen and claim that the Justice Department’s investigation came as retribution for the United States’s not being chosen to host the 2022 World Cup. “It doesn’t smell good,” he said, with a strong hint of conceit.)

Then, one wrong step, one piece of bad news. Then another. And another. So much bad news that you dread showing up for work.

Maybe by Monday Blatter wasn’t so sure he should work for FIFA anymore. By Tuesday, he was certain he could not.

In the wake of a corruption inquiry at FIFA, Mr. Blatter first said, “I would like to stay with you,” while promising to reform the organization. But on Tuesday he said he would step down.

So what was it that turned Sepp Blatter from defiant to defeated? Tell us, Sepp. You’re a man who likes to talk and talk.

What, exactly, created such a sea change between Friday, when you basked in the admiration of those FIFA delegates who voted for you, when you accepted their handshakes and their back slaps and their kisses on your cheeks, and Tuesday, when it finally dawned on you that your sport didn’t want you anymore?

Maybe it was the persistent drumbeat of criticism and the avalanche of damning headlines and the not-so-subtle jabs about your character. You probably couldn’t hear that above the applause after Friday’s election, but they have been there all along.

Maybe it was a long conversation between you and your lawyers. They surely must have warned you that the Justice Department could add you to the list of FIFA officials under suspicion of corruption. Maybe they already knew you were on the list.

That might make anyone jump ship, even the captain, especially now that we know that you personally — and not just FIFA as an organization, or a few bad actors inside it — are among the targets of the Justice Department investigation.

Perhaps you heard the news that some former colleagues are being asked to turn on you and tell the feds everything they know about you in exchange for leniency in their own cases.

Did that make you rewind, in your mind, your interactions with those colleagues over the last few years? Or the last 20, 30, even 40 years?

It’s possible that you heard the clopping of Budweiser’s Clydesdales stalking you in the night? Or that you started having nightmares about the clowns at McDonald’s, another FIFA sponsor?


For years, those companies have been so good at turning a blind eye. Did they finally rip off their blinders and ask for your head?

Did those sponsors hold a power that was finally — belatedly — even greater than your own?

At least once you realized that you had a giant bull’s-eye on the back of your bespoke suit, you had the skills to say “It’s over” in five languages.

In your speech announcing that you would step down, you said it was because you simply love the game so much.

You said your only concern was what was best for the sport, and for FIFA.

Nice sentiments. It would be great if they were true.

“I cherish FIFA more than anything,” you said on Tuesday in your declaration that you no longer merited a place as its leader. Who knows if that was your motivation, or if it’s just another unimaginative excuse after a long, long weekend thinking things over? But that explanation will have to do.

For now.

In another few days, we might know so much more.


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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/03/sports/soccer/sepp-blatter-from-defiant-to-defeated-in-four-fateful-days.html?ref=sports&_r=0