Judgment Day finally arrives for undisputed king of bluster

There was one damning admission by Sepp Blatter in his rambling but defiant appearance at a news conference following the announcement of the eight-year bans for the 79-year-old Fifa president and Uefa president Michel Platini.

That moment came when Blatter admitted it was “an error” that the notorious 2m Swiss francs (€1.8m) payment to Platini was not accounted for in Fifa’s books during the 13-year gap between when they say an oral agreement was struck in 1998 and when the money was actually paid.

So for all his bluster about “I will fight” and “I’ll be back”, there was no real answer to the secrecy that surrounded this strange payment for so many years, which became the main issue for the disciplinary proceedings against the pair by Fifa’s ethics committee.