The most popular sport in the world is in intensive care. Or at least its administration is, following the latest suspensions of the most senior figures in the running and policy-making of the game.
Outgoing Fifa president Sepp Blatter and Uefa head Michel Platini intend to appeal the decisions by Fifa's own ethics committee to ban them from involvement in football for at least 90 days, but the reputations of both men are so damaged that there is an urgent need to look far beyond them for progress out of the escalating scandal.
Fifa’s executive committee (Exco) will meet this month to address the question of what to do about the governing body’s crisis. That very fact invites derision.
Since the last major decision taken by a Fifa Exco – to award the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting rights to Russia and Qatar – all but six of the 24 executives involved in that have since been censured for alleged irregularities, in most cases to do with corruption.
The evidence of what Fifa does badly, and has been doing badly for more than a generation, has never been more glaring and abundant.
But this is a crux moment for those with the interests of the sport genuinely at heart to remember what it is Fifa has done well.
Hard though it seems to peer through the rotten summit of the organisation and glimpse anything positive, there are some principled, virtuous individuals in some of its Zurich offices, or in its outreach programmes.
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Most of them have a far lower profile than the men being investigated, from within, or by US or Swiss prosecutors.
It is too trite to call the collapse of Fifa’s leadership an opportunity. But there will be some conspicuous opportunists gathering around the power vacuum at the top of a body that, according to its last financial report, brought in US$5.7 billion (nearly Dh21bn) in the three years leading up to 2014.
Fifa’s ownership of the World Cup means it sits on a glittering golden egg.
The World Cup’s value comes from its truly global reach. The tournament’s final stages may be too inclusive – 32 teams – for some tastes, but it is an event that enchants spectators from almost everywhere, and can take place in any continent.
Far too large a portion of its profits has been misused under Blatter’s long watch and culture of cronyism, but some of its wealth has genuinely been spread about for the development of the game.
Whoever oversees international football after next February, when presidential elections are still scheduled, their task will be to balance the interests of all football’s constituents.
Allow the most moneyed corner of the game, which is Europe, to become too domineering, and the sport’s global appeal risks gradually falling into retreat. Let the representatives of elite club football start flexing their muscles more, and the feeling of participation that the World Cup and international football generates among citizens of almost every nation on earth will fade.
Running Fifa, or whatever body might need to replace it as the overseer of the most popular sport ever invented, is a tough job.
To do it properly, transparently and with the balanced vision of how to grow the game further requires the sort of leadership football has lacked for more than 40 years.
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