Australian football analyst Les Murray has stopped short of calling FIFA Executives crooked, but has conceded change must take place within the organisation and said recent corruption fears are justified.
His comments have come the day after the unopposed re-election of Sepp Blatter as President of international football's governing body FIFA."There's certainly a justification for fearing that there is corruption at high levels because already, in the past six months, four members of the executive committee, the ultimate governing body of the sport, have gone down either banned or suspended and others are being investigated," he said.
"People are saying 'what the hell is going on?'.
"It's very very serious when that happens... and it's a worrying sign for everybody and I don't blame people for thinking that."
Some members of the FIFA hierarchy have lashed out at the England Football Association's boycott of yesterday's one man election, including senior FIFA vice-president Julio Grondona who accused the global media of printing falsehoods.
"We always have attacks from England," Grondona said, "mostly with lies, and the support of a journalism which is more busy lying than telling the truth. Please leave the Fifa family alone!" he said.
In a direct and personal reference to England's failed bid for the World Cup, Grondona brought politics into the already muddied waters of the debate.
"With the English [2018] bid I said: 'Let us be brief. If you give back the Falkland Islands, which belong to us, you will get my vote.' They then became sad and left ..."
Les Murray was unsurprised by this reaction.
"These are old men who have been there a long time," he said.
"They have been very comfortable in their positions and very comfortable in feeling that they are untouchable, so they kind of tend to band together and respond in this way.
"They feel maybe threatened but I'm not surprised by the way they're behaving (and) I think they could be a bit more humble than that."
Murray says the organisation, under Sepp Blatter, cannot continue operating as it has been.
"If it doesn't change it's going to go to pieces really, it can't sustain itself unless it undergoes, in my opinion, structural and constitutional change.
"By structural I mean there has to be a freshening up of the people that are running the game, younger people coming in with clean hands and there has to be greater transparency, there has to be greater accountability and less of an opportunity for people to be corrupted.
"The question is... 'is Sepp Blatter the man to do that?' and well, I don't know, but he's the one who's been elected with a very good majority."
At his post election victory speech, Blatter vowed to steer the FIFA ship through this storm and deliver it safely into clearer waters.
"Fine words; let's see what the deeds are," Murray said.
"The reality is Blatter has never been forced into a position where he had to say such words and admit to there being a crisis, even though he won't use that word, there is a crisis so he has to get FIFA out of this crisis.
"This last term of his presidency gives him a great opportunity to provide the leadership to make the reforms and to clean up the organisation because he no longer needs political allies to keep him in power at the next election, he doesn't need to work with people who may have dirty hands, so he's got nothing to lose and he can leave a fine legacy by cleaning the place up."
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