"This is not good, in terms of image."
And with that quote from the fabulously-named FIFA spokesman Walter DeGregorio, you have, ladies and gentleman, your first serious contender for understatement of the year.
Not good in terms of image? The image of the World Cup organization, technically (and increasingly laughably) a nonprofit, has been more than besmirched by Wednesday's dawn raids and FBI revelations. It has been branded for all time with a giant red stamp that says CORRUPTION.
These arrests were the breaking of a dam, and now years of allegations against FIFA are flooding into the public consciousness. For a quick primer on how deep the corruption goes, and how much more these emphatically ongoing investigations are likely to unearth, see this BBC Panorama report from 2010 -- a bit of investigative TV that has been said to have cost England the 2018 World Cup.
How vindicated do you think this reporter is feeling right now?
There is already, after Wednesday, a giant asterisk against South Africa's successful bid for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, and by extension the whole competition. Football history, in which anything World Cup-related is rarely forgotten, will never forget or escape this. If the 2018 and 2022 World Cup go ahead in Russia and Qatar respectively, they too will carry indelible asterisks.
If Blatter had even a crumb of dignity remaining, he'd walk away now, creep back to his lair, sit in his armchair and stroke his cat.— Gary Lineker (@GaryLineker) May 27, 2015
So as much as FIFA president Sepp Blatter may talk, in his belated statement late Wednesday, about the need to "regain your trust," that ship has very much sailed. FIFA can never regain our trust, because over the past three decades, Blatter has riddled the organization with his people and his private-jet culture, top to bottom.
There's only one way for the Fédération Internationale de Football Association to regain the trust of the people of planet Football, and it isn't another one of Blatter's tepid self-investigations. It isn't even for Blatter to resign.
It's to kill the whole thing with fire. Shut FIFA down, sell off that glass headquarters with the ridiculous Dr. Strangelove war room, and start a new World Cup-organizing nonprofit with a new name somewhere else -- one entirely accountable and transparent. Perhaps even one that waives broadcasting rights and gives the World Cup to the entire world as a gift, gratis, because profit is not supposed to be the point.
The death of FIFA is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Switzerland, where FIFA is headquartered, has acres of damning reports on the group (the release of which its lawyers blocked for years) and has threatened to kick it out of the country in the past.
Swiss officials have suggested no other developed country, certainly not one that can keep FIFA executives in the style to which they're accustomed, would be willing to take them. They're probably right.
Killing FIFA may sound to some ears like a drastic solution, even some with no love for FIFA. Wouldn't that leave football, albeit temporarily, without a governing body, an organization that maintains the rules of the world's largest sport?
Well, actually, no, because FIFA isn't the governing body of football. That would be the International Football Association Board, an outfit that predates FIFA by a decade and still meets twice a year to administer the official laws of the game. The regional groups such as Europe's UEFA, which has already been making rumblings about going its own way, administer the regional contests.
How world football is run #FIFAarrests http://t.co/z90xKnIQzm pic.twitter.com/Fv1zegNBgF— BBC News Graphics (@BBCNewsGraphics) May 28, 2015
So what is FIFA actually for? The World Cup, of course -- a contest that takes place every four years. We have three years until the next one. That's exactly as long as it took to switch the 1986 contest from one country (Columbia, which decided in 1983 it couldn't afford a World Cup) to another (Mexico, which could.) Take note, Russia.
Three years is also exactly as long as it took a certain governor named Mitt Romney to turn around the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in the wake of bribery allegations. Say what you like about Romney as a politician -- I have -- but he understood how to clean house at a sports organization by ripping everything out, root and branch, and starting over.
A World Cup is an order of magnitude bigger than a Winter Olympics, of course. But most of the actual organizing (and all of the construction) is done by the host country, not the international body. FIFA could vanish tomorrow, and Russia would continue preparing for 2018 like it digs in for winter.
Steve Bell on the Fifa corruption arrests – cartoon http://t.co/8uzUDvd6CT pic.twitter.com/zoAhbAPub7— The Guardian (@guardian) May 27, 2015
The visible parts of FIFA's job are largely limited to deciding which countries will play in which starting group, itself a controversial process; to administer the TV and sponsorship rights, which is exactly the problem; and to call attention to its Fair Play awards.
No player will ever be able to accept one of those from a FIFA official again with a straight face, not now we know so well how the body itself is pay to play. Again, this is the problem with the name, and the reason why football needs a fresh start.
[CARTOON] Foul Play at #Fifa http://t.co/VlavBCPJH4 by Dr Jack & Curtis of @africartoons #FifaGate #FifaArrests pic.twitter.com/KaJzCzmKiM— Eyewitness News (@ewnupdates) May 28, 2015
And if, in the worst case scenario, the handover to a brand new organization were to result in the delay or even cancellation of one World Cup? Then so be it. We lost two World Cups in 1942 and 1946, during and after World War II. We survived, we had bigger fish to fry, and the contest came back stronger than ever in 1950.
There's more than enough football on the planet to keep us entertained in the meantime, and perhaps it's better to draw a thick line through a year rather than stick an asterisk next to it. Let history never forget the absolute shame and disgrace FIFA brought upon the beautiful game it was supposed to be fostering.
Amazing back page in tomorrow's London @TeleFootball pic.twitter.com/9dUFeF8d7M— Daniel Garb (@DanielGarb) May 27, 2015
Of course, FIFA isn't about to vote itself out of existence as it meets this week. Sepp Blatter is likely to win reelection, should the election for FIFA President actually be held, because he has been generous in spreading the kickbacks around and has the developing world's voting bloc in his pocket.
The pressure will come from without, not within.
The FBI and IRS have indicated that the $150 million in kickbacks is just the tip of the iceberg. Swiss police are combing through the computers they seized from FIFA HQ as we speak. We're in for long years of embarrassing revelations.
We're probably going to see toe-curling FIFA emails that make the digital transgressions of U.S. politicians look like notes passed in class.