In Soccer, It’s Not Over Until After It’s Over

Joseph “Sepp” Blatter’s resignation as president of FIFA, soccer’s worldwide authority, just three days after winning re-election to a fifth term, has rocked the sporting world. On Friday, Blatter appeared confident of remaining clean and dry as indictments rained down on his present and former colleagues. But on Monday, he called a snap press conference to deliver the news. The question now is whether anything else will change besides the identity of soccer’s supremo; here are a few views on what comes next for the beautiful game.

The World Cups in Russia and Qatar are likely safe — for now. Up until last week the main controversy surrounding these bids was the civil and human rights records of the two prospective host countries — a controversy FIFA co-opted to its advantage by suggesting that the global spotlight brought by the World Cup could lead to changes in, for example, how Russia treats gays and how Qatar treats migrant workers.

Now, of course, there is a fresh controversy about how the tournaments were awarded. Though the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups has been implicated in the bribery scandals surrounding FIFA, a re-vote to choose new hosts might not happen. Either a country that lost its bid — like the United States or England — would have to sue FIFA, or FIFA would have to decide to re-vote on its own. Regardless of who leads FIFA next, the former process would be lengthy, and the latter still seems unlikely.

But perhaps it’s just a little more likely now. Blatter may have had a stake in staying with Russia and Qatar to preserve an air of infallibility for FIFA, but the new president will have no such interest. Indeed, Blatter is believed to have voted for the United States when the decision was first taken, knowing that a World Cup here would probably have been much more lucrative for FIFA; only later did he decide to own the choices of Russia and Qatar. The promise of a bigger payoff might now become the main incentive to move the tournament, especially if more sponsors desert FIFA.

FIFA will still police itself, but perhaps a bit more vigorously. As Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of FIFA’s audit and compliance committee, said in remarks right after Blatter’s resignation, the vetting of FIFA members by their national soccer associations has clearly been insufficient to stave off corruption. FIFA will now do the vetting itself. Under Blatter, it had a poor history of acting on the results of ethics reviews. His successor will have a hard time doing anything as brazen as dismissing the results of internal investigations. Those investigations might become more numerous if they are viewed as a way to deal with problems before they flare up in public.

Sucks to be Prince Ali. Speaking of possible successors, Blatter’s only opponent in Friday’s election was Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan, who won just over a third of the vote. His campaign speech was about values and transparency — all very well, except that many of the voters in the election are the same people who depended on FIFA’s opaqueness to line their own pockets. His delivery was also a bit stilted, quite a contrast to Blatter’s easygoing charisma.

Now, because Blatter can essentially set the rules of his own succession, Prince Ali may have a much tougher time taking the top job. Candidates who bowed out of the race to give Ali a better shot at toppling Blatter, like Portuguese soccer legend Luís Figo, may choose to run again. The new election hasn’t been scheduled yet, which may give Blatter time to put forward his own candidate. In any event, it’s hard to believe that the many members who voted against Prince Ali will prefer him to an institutional candidate who might keep the gravy train chugging.

Soccer remains business as usual. None of this affects most of the international tournaments planned and ongoing this summer, including the Under-20 Men’s World Cup, Women’s World Cup, and Gold Cup. FIFA’s bureaucracy remains in place to work with the local organizing committees. If anything, the Copa América in Chile may have a few more storylines thanks to the indictment of South American soccer officials. Moreover, most of the big professional leagues are already on vacation.

Not much will change at FIFA anytime soon, either. The organization may be losing some of its top executives, but it will take much more than replacements drawn from the same world to change how FIFA operates. (In fact, one of its regulations is that candidates to replace Blatter must have at least three years of soccer-related work leading up to a presidential election.) To bring in a truly new broom, that might be one more page of FIFA’s rulebook that needs tearing out.

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