Leader: Fifa must allow extra time for presidency vote

FIFA, the governing body of world football, has been for many years been seen as a bloated bureaucracy, accountable to no-one, infused with an arrogance and complacency which its huge power and wealth have engendered. Recent events have proved it is far worse than that.

The allegations being made against Sepp Blatter, the current Fifa president, by the man seeking to unseat him in an election, Mohamed bin Hammam, are the latest in a trail of claim and counter-claim over alleged bribery and corruption involving key decisions on where the lucrative future World Cup competitions will be held.

In the past, there have been suspicions over this process but the obviously inappropriate choice of Qatar - a tiny, searingly hot, obscure but very rich country with hardly any footballing heritage - to host the 2022 World Cup was so incredible that serious questions were finally asked. The allegation which flowed from investigations was that substantial bribes were paid to countries who had votes and, allegedly, to senior figures who had influence over the choice. Bin Hammam is alleged to have been involved and he, in turn, now alleges Blatter knew.

Yesterday, Britain's sports minister called for the vote on the presidency to be halted until these matters are cleared up, a sensible suggestion. But does that go far enough? Perhaps a completely new organisation is needed to rid world football of any suggestion that it's not the excellence of your facilities but the fatness of your brown envelope that matters most.