Arrest notices as FIFA enters the post-Blatter era

LONDON -- For FIFA, Wednesday was the first day of life without Sepp Blatter at the helm, and CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports the shoes, or the soccer cleats, were still dropping.

Blatter's shock departure Tuesday as FIFA president doesn't mean the global soccer body is now fixed, says Phillips, and it certainly doesn't mean that Blatter and FIFA are now off the hook.

But something happened to change Blatter's mind between his re-election Friday and departure Tuesday after promising his "football family" that together they "will do a good job together"

"Men in Blazers" podcast and television co-host Roger Bennett said sponsorship deals and the ongoing investigation turned the tide.

"Sepp Blatter, FIFA have never dealt with the might of the FBI, the kind of ruthlessness of the IRS before as an opponent," Bennett said Wednesday on "CBS This Morning." "Secondly, having FIFA exposed on the front page of The New York Times for a week, on ABC, on CBS, on every news network in their home country, for these massive FIFA sponsors, it makes them talk in the only language FIFA understands, which is ultimately money."

Even as he announced he was to leave FIFA's stage, U.S. prosecutors made it clear he was still in their sights.

Any investigation into FIFA corruption, says Phillips, was always likely to include the man who ran the place like a personal fiefdom.

And it's a fiefdom over which he may still have influence. A vote for Blatter's replacement can occur anytime between December and March, but he will hold power until that time.

"He's not a lame duck now; he has a free hand to do what he's always wanted, which is to reform FIFA," Bennett said. "There is a possibility that he will just king-make and give it to someone who is very much like him. So there's rottenness still."

Various reports suggested Blatter was being investigated by American law enforcement agencies as part of the wider case unsealed last week, but U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, speaking Wednesday in Latvia, refused to confirm he was a target of the probe, saying the Department of Justice would speak through the courts.

Blatter himself was not one of the nine officials from the global soccer body indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice.

But on Wednesday, other law enforcement agencies continued to pile on.

Interpol put six men with ties to Blatter on its most-wanted list, including Jack Warner, Blatter's former vice president from Trinidad and Tobago, who's been accused of taking a $10 million bribe to support the successful South Africa bid for the 2010 World Cup.

"Blatter kept saying, 'It's a huge family, I can't be responsible for my entire family.' When you don't know what your number two is doing, there is a problem," Bennett said.

South African Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula denied Wednesday at a news conference in Johannesburg that his government had "bribed anyone" to win the 2010 bid. He said the $10 million transaction was carried out "above the board" and did not involve members of the South African organizing committee.

"This payment was not a bribe," said Mbalula.

Interpol named the six men in an official "red notice," meaning any one of them could be arrested anywhere they travel.

But it's the next lucrative World Cup tournaments -- the biggest events in sports -- that may now be in play once again, Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022. Warner was arrested in his home country but was later released. One other man on the list, Nicolas Leoz of Paraguay, was under house arrest Wednesday in his country.

The winning bid for the 2022 cup by the hot, tiny and fabulously wealthy Gulf state had the sports world wondering what could possibly have greased the wheels for such an unlikely choice.

Bennett said Russia will probably not lose the bid, but there is a chance Qatar could be back on the table.

"USA 2022 World Cup has a very nice ring to it," Bennett said.

And the question now is, with Blatter gone or going, will FIFA change?

"It is run like a, you know, self-sustaining country with its own government, it doesn't answer to anybody," Financial Times reporter Matthew Garrahan said of the organization. "It's based in Switzerland, it's supposedly a non-profit, yet the people who run FIFA live like kings."

What's different now is the U.S. investigation and the prospect that some of those already accused may be ready to plea-bargain, and point the finger at Blatter, in exchange for more lenient treatment.

Those legal maneuvers are yet to come, and while the real reasons for Blatter's sudden departure remain a mystery, Phillips notes, something worried him enough to make him quit.