"He can be really proud of what he's achieved." Thus spake Alan Hansen on Nelson Mandela before Sunday's World Cup final, as the first democratically elected president of South Africa made his brief appearance, and the BBC pundit graciously glossed it with the same sort of platitude one might bestow upon a manager who had just reached the League One play-offs.

Admittedly, Hansen's paean could never compete with the Spice Girls' meeting with Mandela in 1997, during which Geri Halliwell equated Girl Power with the anti-apartheid struggle and explained to Mandela: "I think we are all on the same level." But it certainly lent something to the moment.

And yet, watching the frail nonagenarian being wheeled out, surely anyone who had heard his grandson's interview with 5 Live earlier that same morning would have found it difficult to surrender entirely to the Fifa-commanded spectacle.

"We've come under extreme pressure from Fifa requiring and wishing that my grandfather be at the final today," Mandla Mandela had explained, before reiterating that the family was still in mourning for the death of Mandela's 13-year-old granddaughter. "They [Fifa] said that Sepp Blatter wished that my grandfather comes out to the final. I think people ought to just understand the family's traditions and customs and understand we've had a loss in the family … Their focus is having this world icon in the stadium, yet not really paying attention to our customs and traditions as a people and as a family."

Even though Blatter's ghastliness is hardly surprising, do just picture that moral pygmy guilt-tripping arguably the standout political figure of the late 20th century into attending a football match. There can be few more eloquent testaments to the arse-about-titness of life under Fifa. Indeed, having sat through the final he deserved, one can only fantasise about Sepp being transferred straight to a spell on Arjen Robben Island, to contemplate his organisation's behaviour over the tournament and during the preparations for it.

Such a period of reflection is beyond unlikely. Perhaps the most valuable of the myriad benefits afforded to Fifa is the fact that in the wake of a World Cup, the debate unfailingly centres on where the host nation goes from here. And yet in light of the above and a host of other profoundly craw-sticking incidents, wouldn't it be nice if the focus switched instead to Fifa itself? How did football's governing body handle itself? Did it earn the estimated £2.5bn in tax-free profit it lifted out of the event?

Naturally, Fifa has developed a fine line in shrugging off such inquiries. It deploys that classic sleight of hand which allows the most self-interested authoritarians to style themselves as people's champions – namely, it dismisses all criticism of its modus operandi as a mere chattering-class preoccupation.

What ordinary people care about, it would insist, is love of the game, its transformative powers, and the magical opportunities for escape from their ordinary little lives. Yet having listened to irate callers to South African talk radio, and spotted several of the popular "Fick Fufa" T-shirts being worn by locals so ordinary that they certainly couldn't do anything so transformative as afford a ticket to Mr Blatter's tournament, I can't help feeling his argument wears progressively thin. Indeed, Fifa's invidiousness becomes somehow more pronounced when brought to bear upon a developing nation.

South African legal experts despaired that lawmakers displayed an excessive willingness to kowtow to Fifa, for instance in making unauthorised marketing a criminal offence as opposed to a civil one. Halfway through the tournament, it was estimated that the "Fifa World Cup Courts" established to appease Zurich were costing £160,000 per largely petty conviction, in a country whose justice system cannot cope with the serious crimes that swamp it.

We already knew Fifa could trump a medium-sized government. What South Africa underlined was the fact that Fifa can trump constitutional rights, cementing the organisation's status as a sort of travelling oligarchy, enjoying all the benefits of power with none of the disadvantages, like having to provide healthcare or be remotely accountable.

Fifa's MO is to ensure the country's statute book has been made comfortable for its arrival, take over almost entirely for the period of time needed to siphon out the money, before pulling up anchor and moving on to the next host organism. Naturally, we all wish Brazil the best of luck – but the time has surely come to ask who regulates the regulator. Perhaps it's one for the UN, assuming Fifa isn't about to take its first seat on the security council.