ABSTRACT
In Seoul this sweltering May day in 2002, the FIFA president sought to stem the tide of his own Watergate. Documents were disappearing from the les at FIFA House, and integrity and credibility draining daily from the veins of the world governing body. Blatter had just been re-elected as president of the governing body of world football, FIFA. There’d never been a FIFA Congress quite like this one. It had come close in 1998, when Blatter won the presidency against European (UEFA) football boss Lennart Johansson. This time round Blatter faced a challenge from boss of the African football confederation, Cameroonian Issa Hayatou. The world media were hungry for this, and Blatter was spread across the headlines of the world press, featured in Time magazine – in mainstream rather than sports items – all asking whether he could survive the serious allegations over his stewardship of FIFA.
