FIFA President Sepp Blatter delivers his speech during the opening ceremony of the 65th FIFA Congress in Zurich on Thursday.Fabrice Coffrini/AFP / Getty Images
If plausible deniability were to take human form, it would look like Sepp Blatter. The president of FIFA, soccer's ruling body and also its cash machine, has waded through 20 years of corruption and scandal without getting a drop of mud on his expensive suits and handmade shoes. Even this week, with the U.S. indictment of nine current and former FIFA officials on bribery and related charges, Mr. Blatter was able to play the victim, blaming a "tiny minority" for the latest scandal to occur under his watch.
"We, or I, cannot monitor everyone all of the time," Mr. Blatter said on Thursday, testing again the limits of the plausible. "If people want to do wrong, they will also try to hide it."
Some of that "tiny minority" has been charged with graft that directly led to the selection of South Africa as the host of the 2010 World Cup. What could be more important to the president of FIFA than ensuring a clean and transparent system for awarding World Cups? Shouldn't he have been monitoring it closely?
Sorry, no time for that. Mr. Blatter's sole preoccupation is being re-elected FIFA's supreme ruler. There are 209 member countries, and each one gets a vote when the president is chosen. Mr. Blatter is credited with expanding the sport's popularity in small, less-developed countries. But he's done it by giving millions of FIFA's vast incomes to those countries to build soccer infrastructure, and in return has guaranteed their support at election time.
Other than that, he works hard to remain willfully ignorant of the briefcases stuffed with cash that are the going rate for FIFA's soul, and therefore can deny direct knowledge of any bribes. Unless, of course, someone is good enough to bring one directly to his immediate attention. Then, look out! Monitoring!
Mr. Blatter is up for re-election again at FIFA's congress in Zurich this week. He will probably win. Which is why the U.S. and other jurisdictions should continue to do his job for him and "monitor" FIFA and, if need be, bring more charges. Switzerland, where FIFA is based, should revoke the organization's tax-free status. And major sponsors should press FIFA to clean up its act.
Because the last thing that will fix FIFA is FIFA. Under Mr. Blatter's leadership, soccer's most powerful body is far too compromised to ever straighten itself out.