John Leicester: Administrators fall face first into the gutter on day beautiful game reaches low point

However, Fifa's grubby football bureaucrats are soiling the fun. When Fifa bureaucrats can't even organise their internal ballot without turning it into a farce, then how can they be trusted to oversee global management of the beautiful game? Short answer: they can't.

Fifa's so-called ethics committee is now meant to clean up this mess. A pressure-hose would surely be more effective, because the dirt that has been thrown at Fifa over the years seems caked so thick.

You could fill books - indeed, some have - with all the suspicions and claims of malfeasance. The latest allegations that would-be president Mohamed bin Hammam sought to bribe voters are, however, more damaging than others that Fifa has swatted away because this time they come from an insider, Chuck Blazer. The American is a member of Fifa's executive committee which, among other things, decides which nations host the World Cup. For that rich prize, presidents, prime ministers and princes get down before them on bended knee. Bin Hammam also sits on that committee. And he, in turn, claims that the man he is trying to unseat, Fifa president Sepp Blatter, may have known about but did nothing to stop any payoffs to voters in the Caribbean.

In short, it looks like a snake eating its own tail, with former friends and allies within Fifa turning on each other.

An ideal outcome for football would be that the snake consumes itself entirely, that Fifa's discredited leadership be replaced and rejuvenated. That is what needs to happen for Fifa to begin winning back credibility. But that is not likely to happen any time soon.

• John Leicester is an international sports writer