Blatter's power game boosted by Platini in 'parody of democracy'

With a typically elegant nudge of help from the the old French maestro Michel Platini, Fifa's embattled president, Sepp Blatter, was expected to cruise home in the battle for his job and his reputation here around breakfast time today.

But if Blatter, whose critics say has a voting-gathering technique which might have brought a blush to the old Cook County machine on Chicago's South Side, was set for survival there was still a huge question mark about the future organisation of the world's most popular and lucrative game.

Blatter so brazenly controlled the floor with hand-picked supporters that Scotland's Fifa vice-president David Will, chairman of the legal and internal audit committees, was three times denied the chance to tell 199 delegates at the extraordinary session of the congress that the president of football's world governing body had juggled the accounts so cleverly that they spoke of a buoyant solvency when, in fact, the reality was precisely the opposite.

However, it seemed certain that even as last-minute lobbying stretched into the early hours of this morning after some delegates stomped angrily out of yesterday's session – "what happened in there was a parody of democracy," said Somalia's Hassan Ali – Blatter had a big margin of unshakeable votes over his Cameroon rival Issa Hayatou.

Though more ugliness had been anticipated on the floor before this morning's vote, the president's manipulative touch seems to have been in full working order despite huge waves of public pressure.

One Brazilian source – his federation chairman, Ricardo Texeira, is one of Blatter's chief supporters – put the president's edge over Hayatou at 70 votes with the likelihood of around 30 "protest" abstentions. But this was today's battle; the even bigger question is how Fifa remakes its image tomorrow and in the four years before the next World Cup in Germany.

With Platini – that's how. This was the insiders' word after Platini, who has been adopted by Blatter rather in the way that he himself was sponsored by the old Brazilian empire builder João Havelange, made his telling public intervention yesterday.

"Everybody knew what was going to happen today," said Platini. "The ball is in front of the goal and everyone wants to score. But we will win. We have experience and we will make the future fine."

At 66, and after suffering such a turbulent ride over the last few months, it seems that Blatter will be happy to settle for another four years while the amiable Frenchman brings a touch of Gallic poise to the business of rebuilding confidence in Fifa and its ability to handle properly the riches of a game whose capacity to engage the interest of the world is expected to break all viewing records in the next four weeks.

But then even Platini, who has added his elegant support of Blatter to that delivered by Franz Beckenbauer last week, can take public relations only so far.

For years the man who so beautifully orchestrated the midfields of France and Juventus in the 1980s has been Blatter's unelected, glad-handing associate, but unlike such other presidential cronies as Jack Warner, of Trinidad, and Chuck Blazer, of the United States, he does have a superb international cachet and, as they say, knows how to work a room. This is especially so when it is filled with impressionable representatives of obscure South Sea islands. The game has become a little more complex, however, as Blatter's policies have come under ever-increasing critical examination.

This was clear enough on the faces of many delegates as they left the congress hall. There was a plainly deep unease when they considered the future.

Iyo Mohammad, a Hayatou ally and chairman of the Cameroon football association, asked: "How can you be confident of the future when delegates cannot even get the chance to discuss their concerns? Almost the only people who spoke today were in the Blatter camp. He is running the show and a lot that needs to be discussed is just being swept away. Three times David Will was told by Blatter: 'I will not let you have the podium.'"

Norway's Karen Espelund said: "There is no doubt we need new standards – and that will be true whatever the result of the voting. We have to have confidence in our ability to make the game strong at all levels. We have to use our riches for the benefit of the game and not just to increase the power of certain individuals. That is our challenge – and nobody could mistake it today."

The fundamental challenge is to restore a proper distribution of power. The number of competing World Cup teams has swollen from what used to be considered the classic figure of 16, for no more uplifting reason than the growth of profit and the ability to combine new opportunities for the smaller federations with the winning of new, and reliably voting, friends. Now the new carrot is the Goal Fund, which in theory supplies a basic $250,000 (£176,000) a year to developing football countries but is seen by some critics as nothing so much as an open-ended slush fund.

It is a conviction fuelling a growing belief that the result is not progress but a deepening problem in the marshalling of the game's once huge resources. Some see the presence of Brazil's Texeira as a key Blatter supporter as hugely significant in the overall picture of abandoned riches. Brazil, the fantasy football nation, have received the richest deals from key Fifa sponsors such as adidas and Coca-Cola, but their national game teeters from one threat of bankruptcy to another.

A Brazilian was asked about Texeira's background yesterday, and what had been his job before football. "It was to be the husband of one of João Havelange's daughters," came the reply. The mood was of pronounced world weariness. "In Brazil the situation is like a smaller version of Fifa – little provincial states of 100,000 people up around the Amazon have the same voting pull as São Paulo and Rio [de Janeiro]. You know, one day it could be the death of football on the international stage."

Sometime earlier the first delegate to speak – inevitably on behalf of Blatter – was a Mr Patel. He is the president of the Seychelles football association, perhaps not one of the deeper sources of the game's tradition. Platini, plainly, will just have to reach down for some of that old fancy footwork.