Shortly after he was first elected president of FIFA in 1998, Sepp Blatter was asked at a news conference if he'd bribed his way into the job.

"There is talk that your campaign was corrupt, that votes were bought by $50,000 [U.S.] in envelopes," a journalist suggested, according to the Times of London.

"The game is over," Blatter sniffed. "The players have already gone to the changing room. I will not respond to this question."

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He's spent 17 years not responding to that question and many others like it. After Friday's wholly unsurprising re-election, he'll spend four more doing the same.

Credit where credit's due – Blatter may be a scoundrel. He may also be the most effective political operator of the 21st century.

Nothing will change. A few people may go to jail, but FIFA's endemic corruption will continue. The worst of the lot will rise to the top – mainly as human shields for the boss. And while everyone will say the contrite thing in front of the microphones, the game will always be fixed.

Take Friday's election – a supreme piece of political theatre.

The African soccer federation had already lined up behind Blatter. The man who controls the Asian vote – Sheik Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah of Kuwait – met late on Thursday night with European delegates to discuss a coup. For a moment, people began to believe the old man could be toppled.

In the morning, the Sheik pledged his support to Blatter. The African and Asian blocs represented nearly all the votes needed to win.

Much of the developed world – most of Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – sanctimoniously announced it was voting against Blatter.

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Yes, nothing encourages the globe's poor and forgotten to change their cheatin' ways than having a big First World finger waved in their face. On top of its ethical problems, FIFA can now add an east-west, north-south culture war.

Also, though it was the longest of long shots, Canada should not spend another nickel trying to win the right to play host to the 2026 World Cup. That ship hasn't just sailed. Blatter is going to scuttle it in the harbour.

Once his only rival, Jordan's Prince Ali bin Al-Hussein, had conceded after a single round of voting (133-73), Blatter launched into a rambling oration.

Prince Ali had promised change. Blatter promised not to exact revenge against those who'd taken up against him.

"I am the president of everybody," he said.

That must've sent a chill through the room. If anyone was thinking of going rogue, they're not thinking it any more.

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This is what reform means at FIFA – more of the same, but with a slightly more palatable margin of victory.

What are the rest of us to do? If the goal is to affect a cleansing change within soccer's governing body, and return to honesty and transparency, here is a list of our options:

1. There are no options.

2. See No. 1.

A lot of people are screaming about opting out. Why don't England and France and Germany take their ball and go elsewhere? First of all, because it would be ridiculous to abandon an organization you've lost control of through a democratic process. Not if the real thing at stake here is a basic moral principle.

Second, they can't leave because it's not nearly so simple as that.

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FIFA is more than an oversight body. FIFA is, in a very real sense, soccer.

Through the IFAB (International Football Association Board), it controls the Laws of the Game – all the rules that govern the sport.

FIFA can decide that you play soccer with a beach ball. From that point on, that would be how soccer is played, everywhere – from the Premiership all the way down to kids' house-league.

FIFA's power to regulate and control the game is total. Thus, leaving FIFA is leaving soccer. That's the reason nobody threatens it, never mind tries it.

I suppose a few European dissenters could set good sense aside and create a reactionary federation. Great. How will it be organized? Who's in it? Who runs it?

We're talking a Martin-Luther level schism that potentially sets professional teams and players against their national associations. In almost every instance where one part of a successful sports outfit splits off from the larger whole, it withers. And you took this nuclear option because someone in Brazil or Trinidad got greased for marketing rights? Really? That's it?

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It sounds romantic. In theory. Very Robin Hood. That feeling may last a few months. And then you'll have to explain to average soccer fans – so, everyone – they will never again see their teams take part in a World Cup, Euro or Champions League.

It's a task so big and risky, it's risible to suggest any reasonable person would try it.

The most Europe has been willing to do is sneakily suggest it could/might/probably-won't-but-nothing's-impossible boycott the World Cup. Of course, no specific country has said anything close to that. Because it will never, ever happen.

If sport is the opiate of the masses, the World Cup is a trunkful of heroin. You know what happens when you suddenly skip your opiates? You do crazy things – like reading the newspaper and paying attention to politics and wondering why you're taxed at 50 per cent but have to wait two years for a hip replacement.

No, European soccer leaders may want the sugar rush of having a snit in the corner while everyone else is outside having fun. Europe's actual leaders know that's professional suicide. There will be no boycott of anything.

There's only one short-term way out of this – wait for Sepp Blatter to leave. He promised to do so again on Friday. He's promised that before. So, ghoulishly, you're probably waiting for the 79-year-old Swiss to die.

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In the interim, you do what you were always going to do – complain publicly at every opportunity, and concede privately that the game is over. The players have gone back to the changing room. You lost.