We are, after all, supposed to be the guardians of the game. I repeat – the game; the game which vast numbers of the world’s people play and watch and love.

They cannot have loved the spectacle put before them in the past weeks when lust for power replaced the good of the game.

Those who attacked the FIFA President – and me, and anyone who supported him – did so without any understanding of what the world of football is really about.

Yes, of course, it is about the World Cup and other FIFA world championships. Yes, of course, it is about the UEFA Champions League in Europe and other leagues and competitions which draw the crowds and the television audiences and the sponsors.

But it also about many middling to little nations without financial resources, where there is gratitude for a new ball or new uniforms or a field with grass – or even just a field – for the boys or girls or anyone; never mind crowds and TV and sponsors.

That is the game for which we are responsible as much as we are responsible for the greatest sporting show on earth. Without the one there cannot be the other.

The time has come to take these past appalling weeks, these weeks when a few ambitious and bitter men thrust themselves onto the world’s stage, and place them in one of the few sorry chapters in FIFA’s 98-year history – one of the few sorry chapters, but the worst.

Now the right man, Joseph S. Blatter, has been returned as President of FIFA, and I think it is fair to say it could not have happened without the significant help and support of our Confederation, of which we should be justly proud.