It is incredible that current Fifa president Sepp Blatter has the gall even to run for re-election. His own secretary-general, Michael Zen-Ruffinen, has sent a 30-page dossier to the Swiss police, alleging a level of corruption and financial mismanagement which would make Jacques Chirac blush. Five of the seven Fifa vice-presidents have told Blatter to go. And his record shows beyond doubt that he is unfit to govern. Yet this Nixonesque figure remains the clear favourite.

At least the English Football Association - after previously backing Blatter in the forlorn hope of locating the 2006 World Cup in England - opposes him now. That international football is apparently willing to give its discredited president a fresh mandate shows that this is a failure not of one man, but the entire system.

With Fifa refusing to put its own house in order, who can blow the whistle on football's self-preserving élite? It is time for football's major sponsors to step in. Firms such as McDonald's and Coca-Cola benefit hugely by their associations with global football. To protect their own carefully-cultivated corporate images, they should now publicly dissociate themselves from both Blatter and Fifa. These companies and others need to be asked publicly whether they will challenge footballing corruption or, instead, will choose to be accomplices in it.