Enough, as disco queen and noted football authority Donna Summer observed sagely in the 1970s, is enough.

With the Garcia report fiasco now piled on top of the 2022 World Cup timing fiasco, right-thinking football leaders have a responsibility to come together and get behind a challenger strong enough to unseat long-term incumbent Joseph "Sepp" Blatter in next year's FIFA Presidential election.

FIFA's mono-dimensional World Cup-based economy has been going gangbusters enough in recent times for the seemingly endless stream of corruption allegations against football officials to be no more than a superficial irritant, of little apparent consequence for one of sport's most successful business models.

But the issue here has become one of competence - and while no-one can justifiably claim that Blatter is uniquely responsible for FIFA's status as a laughing-stock of epic proportions, let alone the decision to award the World Cup to Qatar without nailing down when the competition would be played, it is the Swiss septuagenarian who is top dog. He should carry the can for the organisation's worsening credibility crisis.

It is a risk and no mistake. A truly credible challenger would require more heft than declared candidate Jérôme Champagne can probably muster.

That means an individual of sufficient stature to entertain realistic hopes of one day succeeding Blatter.

But, of course, if you ran against him and lost, your chances of securing the Swiss master-politician's endorsement when he did at last decide to call it a day would presumably be severely compromised.

Football leaders must now unearth a credible challenger capable of ousting Sepp Blatter from the FIFA Presidency ©Getty Images


And, even at 79 next birthday, even with FIFA's reputation in shreds, Blatter's unsurpassed familiarity with the rules and regulations that govern the global game, along with his impregnable support in some parts of the world, make him a formidable electoral foe.

One imagines that this, coupled with the outcome of past electoral contests pitching Blatter against, first, Issa Hayatou and, then, Mohammed Bin Hammam, must be part of the explanation for why only Champagne has so far had the gumption to throw his hat into the ring for next year's vote in Zurich on May 29.

But with investigator Michael Garcia's extraordinary intervention last Thursday (November 13), FIFA's stock has sunk so low that tactical considerations of that ilk ought now to be cast aside - for the good of the game.

It is a risk, but it is not an impossible task.

What is needed is for three confederations - UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football seem the most likely candidates - to agree on a top-drawer challenger, perhaps at a push an éminence grise of unimpeachable character who would serve only one term, and throw their collective weight behind him.

That trio of confederations accounts at present for 134 of FIFA's 209 member associations, comfortably enough, on the face of it, to ensure victory for a favoured common candidate.

The real world, of course, is not that simple: it is hard, for example, to imagine that Russia would vote against Blatter having secured the World Cup under his Presidency, and Vladimir Putin's nation has the diplomatic clout, no doubt, to sway others to its way of thinking.

But such a scenario would assure us of a real contest, with the outcome far from a foregone conclusion.

A daring challenger could even find a certain amount of ammunition to seek to turn one of Blatter's strongest weapons - the Goal football development programme that he launched in 1999, a year or so after becoming FIFA President - against him.

FIFA's last financial report contains a budget for the 2015-2018 business cycle. This indicates that while overall revenues are projected to rise by 31.6 per cent, the expected increase for development projects is a comparatively meagre 12.5 per cent - from $800 million (£510 million/€638 million) to $900 million (£574 million/€719 million).

That equates to just 18 per cent of total revenue.

A truly credible challenger would require more heft than declared candidate Jérôme Champagne can probably muster ©Getty Images


Electing a new President is, however, only the first step in a series of reforms that will be necessary to restore FIFA's credibility as governing body of the world's biggest sport.

You need to enable the new President to take charge once in situ yet forestall any possibility of him outstaying his welcome.

This will require the Confederations - who actually wield more voting power in the FIFA Executive Committee than the President himself - to consent to clipping their own wings.

I would advocate doing this by completely remodelling the Executive Committee's structure to reflect the realities of the modern game.

Each Confederation should have just one seat on the Executive Committee, the same as the President.

You might argue that Britain, by virtue of its status as cradle of the game, should also retain its seat.

Other than this, seats should be allotted by function, not geography.

Match officials should have a seat; so should sports medicine practitioners, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the women's game, educators, players, sponsors, broadcasters and so on.

The other indispensable reform would be to place a strict limit, say two four-year terms, on the length of time a FIFA President can serve.

Simple stuff, really - although getting it agreed would not be - but enough to enable football's governing body to operate in what Donna Summer might have termed a state of independence.

David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen's Twitter feed can be accessed here.