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*Minor news update: It has just been announced that FIFA President Sepp Blatter will not attend the UEFA Champions League final today as has been traditional. His spokesman says that he's "preparing to testify for the Ethics Committee tomorrow", but it's more likely that he fears the crowd reaction at Wembley.
In an extraordinary interview with reporters as he was preparing to board a plane for Zurich, CONCACAF President Jack Warner bared his teeth and made it plain that if he is going down he plans on taking some other guys with him.
As reported in the normally Warner-friendly Trinidad Express the suddenly cornered Pirate of the Caribbean came out swinging:
"I tell you something, in the next couple days you will see a football tsunami that will hit FIFA and the world that will shock you. … The time has come when I must stop playing dead so you'll see it, it's coming, trust me you'll see it by now and Monday,"
There's of course no question that Warner knows where 30 years worth of bodies are buried; the only thing is that, like John Wayne Gacy, a lot of them are in his own back yard.
Perhaps most remarkably, he spoke for the first time as if he accepts that the jig is, at long last, finally up:
"I have been here for 29 consecutive years and if the worst happen, the worst happen".
When asked point blank if he was prepared to make his exit from FIFA, he replied:
"If that is what it comes to so be it, you must never get too attached to anything, it clouds your judgment and therefore whatever happens, happens, que sera sera. I am not even remotely bothered…They can do what they want, it doesn't bother me".
Later, he added:
"I'll tell you something, I will hold my head high to the very end because, I repeat here again, I am not guilty of a single iota of wrongdoing."
Sounds an awful lot like a man who knows he's out of options.
Warner also made it clear, if there was some question, that his longtime partnership with Chuck Blazer – the constant ally and friend who got him elected in the first place – is irrevocably broken and he is in no mood to be understanding about the ethical bind Blazer found himself in:
"I have lived three score and almost ten and my Jack hasn't been hanged as yet, why should it be hung now? By whom? The American Chuck Blazer? His American lawyer John Collins? Give me a break. I am not the faint-hearted you know … Let them go ahead, I have no problem with that."
Suddenly "my close personal friend Chuck" has become "the American Chuck Blazer" and his "American lawyer". I'm only surprised that, as he's done in the past with others, Warner didn't just go all the way and start referring to him as "a white man".
Warming to his theme of being persecuted by the US, he explained that Blazer was still upset over not getting the World Cup, saying:
"…And there has been some resentment still and the feeling is that I should not be talking to him (Bin Hammam) or his friends. I voted for the US like Mr Blazer and I, like Mr Blazer, was devastated over the fact that the US lost. But I will not allow that to impugn Mr Bin Hammam's character or to destroy our friendship.
"I am not that kind of person and if Mr Blazer and they want to do that, let them go ahead".
Still, lest any of you start to get a little optimistic about the end result, Warner has a message for you:
"At the end of the day, if even the worst happens, I'm still president of CONCACAF"