Surely this was the ultimate expression of Fifa democracy in action: seven leading executives, who had converged on Zurich in the expectation of another week of convivial expense-padding, being escorted off their five-star premises by plainclothes police under the cover of giant bedsheets. So much, then, for Sepp Blatter's blather about transparency. The only glimpse one could catch of Jeffrey Webb, his anointed successor as president, but now one of several men engulfed by charges of racketeering and wire fraud, was through the disguise of some luxury laundry.In the week of Blatter's re-election, once as grim an inevitability as an unpleasant electricity bill, this faintly vaudeville spectacle served as a fitting epitaph for his risible leadership. The 79-year-old has been campaigning for a fifth term on the soaring prospectus that he is a "mountain goat" - in other words, "I just go on and on".Not for much longer, if the FBI have anything to do with it.Of all the majestic creatures that a deluded statesman could have invoked, the goat was a curious choice. For Blatter neglected to mention certain other characteristics of Alpine goats: that they are mulishly stubborn and tend to cling to the nearest available perch. But the extraordinary scenes yesterday morning at Zurich's Baur au Lac Hotel ensure that his grip on power now looks more precarious than ever.For this was the moment when Fifa's dubious courtiers were finally smoked out.Over 17 years of Blatter's wretched reign, Fifa have repelled a bombardment of allegations about corruption and charlatanism as effectively as a pane of bulletproof glass. Sadly for them, the old aloofness and twisting of the truth - think back to the president's insistence that Fifa had "taken the lead" on ethics - no longer works in the face of a law enforcement agency as famously aggressive as the FBI. This was the point at which the secrecy of Switzerland, the place to which the venal and power-hungry have historically flocked to cover up the money trail, collided with the long, strong arm of American justice. Potentially, the repercussions are staggering.Blatter, of course, is clasping the tiny mercy that the American and Swiss inquiries do not directly implicate him. He will make his usual vacuous appeals to the unity of the Fifa family, distancing himself from Webb's Concacaf brigade even when he has shamelessly courted their votes.But there is no way he can be insulated from the toxic stockpile of alleged wrongdoing being dumped at his door. Throughout his rule he has operated cheek by jowl with every one of the seven gentlemen thrown out of the Baur au Lac into unmarked cars.He was so friendly with Webb that he considered him presidential material. And he was never less than cosy in the company of Chuck Blazer, the former ExCo stalwart who has turned whistleblower in the FBI's work. Blazer, with the full complicity of Fifa, was so shamelessly grasping that he used to be paid £4000 a month to rent an apartment in New York's Trump Tower for his cats.Predictably, the damage-limiting press conference by Walter di Grigorio, Fifa's head of communications and public affairs, turned into a ludicrous exercise in evasion and manipulation.Di Grigorio even tried to employ Fifa's usual trick of tilting the narrative 180 degrees so that they appeared the worthy party."We initiated this process," he said, somehow with a straight face. The bitter recent experience of Michael Garcia's report on the Qatar World Cup voting process, which has still not been made public, should tell us enough about Fifa's true commitment to investigating themselves.In all likelihood, Blatter will wrap up his fifth term as president - on another tide of grace and favours. But the remarkable events yesterday mean there is a shaft of light, a hope that the entire edifice of greed and sharp practice that he has helped create could be about to come crashing down. The Americans, though slow to take to football, might prove its greatest hero...