FIFA is soccer's Catholic Church. It's a backwards and destructive institution that should be expunged from the Earth altogether. But it persists, and it won't be dismantled any time soon. We might as well hope that it can make small-yet-meaningful reforms.FIFA President Sepp Blatter is a sort of Pope Leo X, using his position's prestige to indulge his ego and tastes, all while claiming to spread the footy gospel. (Blatter has posited soccer as a panacea for societal ills on more than one occasion.) His soul is an outhouse, and if the grumbling emanating from FIFA's headquarters in Zürich is any indication, his colleagues agree. Yet he's won four elections, and is likely to survive a fifth in 2015. Why doesn't anyone depose him?The only person who conceivably could is the only-marginally-more-progressive UEFA president Michel Platini, who says he's happy where he is. That's a half-truth. Certainly, being at the very top of the European soccer hierarchy has its benefits, but we've known for a while that Platini has designs on seizing the FIFA presidency, either by beating Blatter in an election or by royal succession once the Swiss steps down.In 2011, a top official from a World Cup-winning Football Association told SI's Grant Wahl that "Platini wants to run in 2015, so Platini will ask the big European nations to support Blatter this year." This was back when most folks thought Blatter was heading into his final term. Platini's plan at the time was to endorse the status quo so as not to anger any Blatter-ites. This would give him a chance to run unopposed (or only nominally opposed) in 2015.It's not as if Platini, even if he were to challenge Blatter, would be a radical change candidate. It's nigh impossible to be as corrupt and jerkish as the current FIFA chief—he's the Rolls Royce of self-serious crooks—but Platini is a fellow member of the sportocrat orthodoxy, which means he's dirty too. He's been implicated in the Qatari World Cup voting scandal, and his decision to include the winners of minnow-ish leagues like the Austrian Bundesliga and the Swedish Allsvenskan in the Champions League is simply a crass tactic that guarantees he's got those small nations' Football Associations under his thumb. He also recently told Brazilians—some of whom had lost their homes due to stadium construction—to stop protesting the World Cup in the most condescending way imaginable: "If they can wait at least a month before making social outbursts, it would be good for Brazil and for the football world."It speaks to the hilarious arrogance of both men that Blatter and Platini are running for re-election because, to hear them tell it, they each believe they haven't quite yet finished their respective jobs. They speak as if they're scientists on the brink of developing some plague-eradicating vaccine—or missionaries converting entire continents. Just a few more years, and they'll have this whole soccer thing figured out. Both FIFA and UEFA will be transparent as a glass frog; the game and its governing bodies have nearly been purified.Of course, this won't happen. Blatter and Platini both have horns and tails; one's just a bit less demonic than the other. But given the choice between Pope Leo X and Pope Not Quite As Much of a Dick, you always choose the latter. It would be a shame if Platini were running things in Zürich in 2015, but it's an even bigger one that he won't be.
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