The small Swiss town where he grew up is surrounded by mountains – but the summit of Sepp Blatter’s destiny was not Alpine, rather the peak of the world’s dominant sport.<br /><br /> His election as FIFA’s president in 1998 followed decades of climbing the sports management ladder – first in ice hockey, and then within football’s governing body itself, beginning as its technical director.<br /><br /> Seventeen years later he presides over a glitzy multi-billion dollar global industry.<br /><br /> But in the words of the French paper l’Equipe, so rotten has FIFA become that the noxious stench of its overflowing sewers is impossible to avoid.<br /><br /> In recent years investigations by several of the world’s leading publications such as The Sunday Times have presented detailed allegations of corruption – especially of money changing hands in return for favours from highly influential FIFA officials.<br /><br /> A Swiss paper called the man at the top “the dark prince of football, the godfather, Don Blatterone” – but no inquiry has eve
