Not for the first time, he wrong-footed us all. When the invitation to a FIFA press conference thudded into our inboxes on Tuesday at 3.36pm UK time, I don’t think anyone seriously expected two hours later to be listening to Sepp Blatter, one of the great survivors of our world, setting out how he proposed to “lay down my mandate” as FIFA President.
After all, he had only had this mandate renewed four days earlier, for a fifth time, by beating his sole challenger, Prince Ali Bin Al-Hussein by 133 votes to 73 in FIFA’s Presidential election.
The common presumption after the latest stunning development of a week in sports politics like none other I have witnessed, accordingly, was that this man – who has clung limpet-like to office – must be reacting to some new twist in the FBI investigation that led last week to the dramatic dawn raid in which six football officials, one a potential successor to Blatter, were arrested.
I am not so sure.
There was something about the way he closed his post-victory media conference at FIFA headquarters last Saturday which, with the benefit of hindsight, makes me suspect that this latest Blatter gambit may have been longer in the cogitation.
“I can promise you one thing,” he had said, in an apparently throwaway comment as reporters bayed unsuccessfully to pose one final question.
“We will be more communicative in the future.
“We will give more information.
“But for today, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here.”
Was this the vaguest of hints that he already had Tuesday’s bombshell in mind?
His exit strategy does not smack of a plan cobbled together under pressure on the spur of the moment.
His aim is pretty clearly to shepherd through reforms that could a) go some way to rescuing his battered reputation and b) undermine the power of the confederation bosses.
With a fair wind, he may also be able to hand-pick his successor; had he bowed out before last week’s vote, he would simply have been abdicating power to Prince Ali and his European backers.
Under the current FIFA system, a Confederation President in control of his continent’s bloc vote can, if he so chooses, exert considerable ‘ballot-box’ pressure both upwards, to influence the decisions of FIFA’s Executive Committee (ExCo), and downwards, to sway votes taken in Congress.
This can leave the FIFA President, who has no Confederation to run and therefore no confederation colleagues to support him, startlingly impotent, unless he succeeds in bringing some of the big Confederation bosses around to his point of view.
A resourceful master politician such as Blatter has plenty of levers at his disposal in order to achieve this.
But in terms of raw voting power inside the Executive Committee alone, he is no better off than the President of the microscopic Oceania Football Confederation (OFC).
This can apply even to a FIFA President who has proved as masterful at preserving his own position as Blatter.
As evidence, you need look only at the first round of voting in the election to choose a host for the 2022 World Cup, when I believe Blatter was alone in casting his ballot for Australia.
I am not aware of him ever having confirmed this, but I don’t believe that he voted for Qatar at any point in the four-round contest.
Add to this the fact that almost all FIFA ExCo members are chosen not by Congress, but by their own Confederations.
This can leave the President a virtual hostage to his supposed regional lieutenants.
As Blatter said in a key line from yesterday’s remarks: “The Executive Committee includes representatives of confederations over whom we have no control, but for whose actions FIFA is held responsible.”
His proposed solution? A smaller ExCo, elected by Congress with term limits and integrity checks for members “organised centrally through FIFA and not through the confederations”.
And while he didn’t mention it yesterday, his only discernible pledge in Friday’s candidate’s address was to set up a Department for Professional Football at FIFA, which might also, I fancy, in time be a way of diluting the Confederations’ influence.
All of this, clearly, cannot be enacted overnight, so while we have been admiring striking photographs of Blatter leaving the room yesterday, he will probably be with us for some months yet – more than likely until around the time of his 80th birthday on 10 March 2016.
He actually needs cooperation from at least part of the ExCo if this long goodbye is to play out as he desires.
The FIFA Statutes make clear it is for the ExCo, not the President, to call the Extraordinary Congress he wants.
However, it is enough for one-fifth of the members to make the request in writing, so the hurdle is not too onerous.
The Extraordinary Congress is to be held within three months of such a request being received; the FIFA general secretariat must, however, be notified of candidatures for the FIFA Presidency at least four months before the Congress.
As things stand, the next FIFA ExCo is not scheduled until late-September.
As for the real burning question – the likely identity of the ninth FIFA President – one thing is clear: it cannot be an inspirational outsider to football such as, say, Bill Clinton or Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The Statutes stipulate that candidates must have played an active role in association football for two of the past five years.
Also, if Blatter indeed remains as FIFA President, as he intends, until the election, he should be able to wield considerable influence over the choice of his successor.
Having backed him so recently, and in spite of such formidable distractions, there must be a good chance that many of his 133 supporters would back whichever candidate Blatter endorsed.
There may also be scope for him to choreograph the Congress to coax national associations further to deliver his preferred result, just as last week’s Israeli-Palestinian handshake enabled Blatter to come across as an effective peacemaker shortly before voting started.
There is a danger that the process might degenerate into a bitter fight for control of the game between broadly Europe, epicentre of club football, and the rest of the world.
The corollary of that is that a candidate who can draw support from both blocs should be well-placed.
UEFA President Michel Platini might be able to achieve that, with backing from Francophone Africa and parts of the Middle East, to add to 53 European associations, should he decide to run.
Jérôme Champagne, another Frenchman, has strong international ties in places like Brazil and Palestine and close knowledge of FIFA’s inner workings, though his campaign for the last election failed to gain traction.
There are a number of possible Asian candidates, meanwhile, who could be formidable challengers if they can secure a foothold in Europe.
While Jordan’s Prince Ali is thought to have obtained more than half of his votes last week from Europe, this would be highly unlikely to be repeated should UEFA this time throw its weight behind one of its own.
Kuwait’s Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah, newly-arrived on FIFA’s ExCo but an International Olympic Committee (IOC) member of 23 years’ standing, ought by contrast to be able to draw on his formidable Olympic network to attract votes from a wide variety of countries whoever he is up against.
IOC President Thomas Bach, a German, is a close ally.
Sheikh Ahmad’s support is understood to have played a part in Bach getting the top job in 2013; the Kuwaiti, President of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), also took Bach’s side in the recent row with SportAccord that culminated with Marius Vizer’s resignation on Sunday as SportAccord President.
With Swiss criminal proceedings ongoing into suspected irregularities in the allocation of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Qatar may also be feeling a need for friends in high places, and Sheikh Ahmad has on occasion spoken out strongly in their support.
Finally, as a longstanding IOC colleague, it seems quite conceivable that Blatter might endorse his candidacy.
The Sheikh already wears many hats, however, and may be reluctant to countenance the burden of taking on one of the most prominent roles in world sport.
If he does not run, it might open the door for a candidacy from Shaikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain, who recently took over from Prince Ali as the Asian Football Confederation (AFC)’s FIFA vice-president.
South Korea’s Chung Mong Joon, Prince Ali’s predecessor as Asia’s FIFA vice-president, has also let it be known that he is considering presenting himself.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.