Forty years in the International Football Federation (FIFA), seventeen of them as president, have had an abrupt end cona unexpected resignation of Joseph Blatter on Tuesday, after the umpteenth scandal of corruption in the organization.
Blatter swam in recent counter days, came out winner of the 65th Congress, won re-election until 2019 and the luxury to settle scores with his detractors in an interview on Swiss Television Radio is even allowed, but ended up drowning in the bank, when it seemed saved .
The man who seemed untouchable, immune to the crisis and over the violent turbulence of the FIFA she was spotted for the first time its Achilles heel, vulnerability, and ended up giving up a position that seemed nearly life by identifying who had managed to between himself and FIFA.
In these 17 years as FIFA has walked with honors of Head of State, it has been received as equals by the highest dignitaries and has turned to FIFA in a money machine, but the last hurricane, generated after the arrest of seven directors of football last week in Zurich, has finally topple the reign of Blatter in Zurich court.
His presidency was marked almost from day one by scandals and internal wars.
He was elected in 1998 as a replacement for his mentor, Joao Havelange, and since then I had to struggle to establish itself as a customary authority to twenty years of leadership of the Brazilian organization.
On that process of 1998, the British David Yallop wrote a book, "How have rigged the game," accusing Blatter of corrupt team to ensure victory over the other candidate, Lennart Johansson, UEFA president then practices.
He had a tough challenge in 2002 for the first election, to meet with attacks of several members of its Executive Committee and the then secretary general Michel Zen-Ruffinen, who spoke of manipulating the body's accounts and financial irregularities.
He won without problems (139 votes to 56) that election rival in Seoul, the Cameroonian Issa Hayatou, president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF).
In 2006, another book from England, Andrew Jennings, entitled "Red Card", again addressed corruption 'was Blatter', and publication even became legally banned in Switzerland.
Nobody prevented re-election in 2007, where he was the sole candidate, but four years ago, at the 61st Congress in 2011, corruption was the subject of corridors and debates before the election of the Swiss.
Which would be his opponent, Qatari Mohammed Bin Hamman, he was forced to retire a few days before the vote after a corruption case by paying bribes
Blatter attended the elections alone and "captain in the storm" proclaimed.
"Crisis? What crisis?" He said then, in one of his most memorable phrases, that could have repeated last week, when corruption struck again developing the FIFA Congress, which despite Blatter re-elected the crisis and the media attacks of the previous days.
In recent years the suspicions of corruption in the allocation of venues for the World Cup in 2018 and Qatar 2022 Russia has been one of his major headaches.
The author of the report commissioned to assess the cleaning process, the American Michael Garcia, came to resign last December disagree with the conclusions of the study conducted by FIFA itself.
The reelection assured since Friday, Blatter seemed to have much work ahead, but the story took a turn script to the final precipitate his presidency.
It is the end point of a long career in FIFA, where the former executive of the Swiss Ice Hockey Federation came in 1975, when he was director of Public Affairs and Sports in a known watchmaker.
Since 1975 he was continuously in FIFA, first as technical director until 1981 and then as secretary general until 1998 when he became president.
The new mandate would be in charge of FIFA until 2019, when it would have 83 years, but the resignation puts an end abruptly as important as a troubled presidency.
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