FIFA President Sepp Blatter has done a lot of good for football

It might surprise you to find me starting my column this week with a DEFENCE of Sepp Blatter.

You might not read it elsewhere, but the FIFA President is, in fact, a charming wee guy.

In my time as SFA Chief Executive, I never found him to be anything less than friendly to me.

He always knew who you were, and would always stop and say hello.

While he was certainly sharp-witted, I never found him to be arrogant.

He even asked me to sit on FIFA’s Football Committee, a duty I was happy to carry out.

There was, of course, another side to him. Rumours about Blatter were rife.

The talk was that he ran everything at FIFA, and engineered it all to suit himself. And I know from personal experience that he liked to be treated like royalty.

When we helped run IFAB (the International Football Association Board) at Gleneagles, the FIFA delegation flew into Edinburgh in their own private jet.

We laid on a luxury coach to transport them from the airport. That wasn’t good enough for the President, though.

He flew over on the same plane as his colleagues but specified he would require a limousine to pick him up.

If you take that example to be typical and we have no reason to believe any different this is a man used to living like royalty on the game’s purse.

The contradiction is that Blatter HAS done a lot of good for the game.

He has stated publicly he wants to be remembered as the man who took the World Cup around the world, and he has been proactive in his attempts to make that happen.

We have had Finals in the Far East and Africa, while the Middle East is scheduled to take its turn in 2022 in Qatar.

Would Japan, South Korea and South Africa have had the planet’s biggest sporting event without the benefit of his support?

I am not sure they would. Certainly Qatar would have had next to no chance.

It has been possible because Blatter has directed lots of FIFA money into developing the game throughout the various Conferences.

That has won him a lot of respect and given him votes and a huge power base.

As influential as Europe is in the world game, when it comes to one country-one vote, they are at a big numerical disadvantage.

There are 209 members of FIFA. Only 54 of them are also in UEFA.

Now critics of the FIFA President will argue he has played on the resentment felt by countries around the world against the big European superpowers.

That in using the pool of money to help them, he has also built up a massive bank of favours, to be used in circumstances like taking the World Cup to Qatar.

I think their suspicions are correct to an extent at least.

Michel Platini, the UEFA President, and Blatter both speak of being close on a personal level.

I don’t believe it. In fact, I am sure it is all pretence.

Not when I have been present at a FIFA Congress, and seen Platini make faces to others while his FIFA counterpart is delivering a speech.

Of course, the votes Blatter commands aren’t all that matters.

Argentina and Brazil apart, UEFA contains all the world’s biggest powers.

The big five of Spain, England, France, Germany and Italy contain the world’s biggest clubs.

Those clubs have their pick of the top players, no matter where they’re from.

But they will also, inevitably, tend to use a core of talent from the native countries.

Fill a national team with players with lots of Champions League experience, and you are going to have a better-than-average chance of winning the World Cup.

So a UEFA breakaway from FIFA would be a catastrophe for the ruling body.

We are not there yet. But this one, unlike the defence of Blatter, will run and run.