Whatever else may be wrong with Sepp Blatter, he is rarely boring.
"I'm really sorry," Blatter said, as some of the more naive of those present anticipated that Blatter was about to apologise for something he had done.
"I'm sorry that I'm still somewhere a punching ball. I'm sorry for football. I'm sorry for how I am treated in this world of humanity."
He then summed up how bizarre it was for the Ethics Committee to consider it wrong of him to make a mysterious payment of $2m to Platini three months before the Frenchman left him to run unopposed in the 2011 presidential election, in which Platini encouraged European associations to vote for Blatter. Who had just given him $2m.
"Suspended eight years. Suspended for what?" Blatter asked.
Well, not suspended for corruption or bribery, as the Ethics Committee stopped short of that. But certainly for a conflict of interest.
"Perhaps I am not the cleverest man in the world at the moment,” said Blatter, before congratulating Barcelona on their Club World Cup win.
But he remains a fighter, and is unlikely to let the small matter of overwhelming evidence stop him from making a bid to oversee the FIFA presidential election on February 26.
"I'll be back," he said as he left the room.
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