Sepp Blatter’s resignation has sparked a number of questions, including what happens to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups

Why has Sepp Blatter resigned?

Just four days after putting himself forward for re-election as president of Fifa despite the multiple arrests and US Department of Justice indictment of senior officials two days earlier, Blatter’s resignation is a shock. The closest he came in his resignation speech to citing a reason was to say his re-election was “not supported by everybody”; a characteristically thick-skinned understatement, given 73 votes against him and the intense hostility towards him from many European football countries, including England’s Football Association.

Blatter will have been told by senior Fifa insiders, including Domenico Scala, the Swiss businessman effectively in charge of reform, that the US indictments have damaged Fifa’s credibility beyond any of the many previous scandals. Whether there is a more direct reason for Blatter stepping down, such as the spectre of the investigations focusing on him more personally, remains to be seen.

What will happen to the presidency of Fifa?

For the first time since 1998, football’s world governing body can look for a president beyond Blatter, who has led Fifa to dramatic sporting, territorial and financial expansion, and unprecedented corruption scandals.

The promise at the news conference was that this will lead to fundamental reform, but the election will be open to any candidate putting themselves forward, and the outcome is necessarily uncertain. As Blatter’s bitterly contested re-election showed, Fifa is a deeply divided organisation, in which Europe’s rich and powerful football nations can often be viewed as arrogant and entitled by the football associations of many poorer countries. Winning an election on a more unified mandate and being able to impose real reform are Herculean tasks, made more difficult by the scandals and bitterness of the last week.

Where does this leave the planned World Cups of 2018 and 2022 in Russia and Qatar?
Greg Dyke, the English FA chairman, said immediately that Blatter’s resignation means the votes for the hosts of these two World Cups will be looked at more closely now and Qatar will be feeling uncomfortable. The stance of both countries has always been that they did not do or pay anything illicit to any of the then-Fifa executive committee members who voted, several of whom have now been proven guilty or stand accused of corruption.

On the same day as seven Fifa officials were arrested in Zurich last week, the Swiss attorney general announced a new investigation into the award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar. Data and documents stored in computers at Fifa were seized, as well as “relevant bank documents at various financial institutes in Switzerland”.

All 10 executive committee members who voted on the 2018 and 2022 World Cups who were in Zurich last week are to be questioned, the attorney general said, “as persons providing information”, not as suspects.

The attorney general’s statement was explicit that “irregularities” and “unjust enrichment” are suspected in the allocation of the tournaments to Russia and Qatar, and suspicions that money was laundered through Swiss bank accounts.
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