So what does Jack Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion tell us about Sepp Blat­ter's promise to make Fi­fa more trans­par­ent? On the one hand few who have ob­served Fi­fa's lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty will be sor­ry to see Warn­er go af­ter 30 years at the top of Fi­fa. The for­mer vice pres­i­dent has been at the cen­tre of many cor­rup­tion storms and it is no sur­prise that, fac­ing an ethics in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to claims he arranged to bribe mem­bers of the Caribbean Foot­ball Union on be­half of the for­mer pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mo­hamed Bin Ham­mam, he chose to quit be­fore he was pushed.

But in do­ing so, he has de­nied foot­ball and Fi­fa the op­por­tu­ni­ty of a prop­er air­ing of the claims against him. In an­nounc­ing his res­ig­na­tion yes­ter­day, Fi­fa said all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the ethics com­mit­tee in­ves­ti­ga­tion were closed with Warn­er pre­sumed in­no­cent (neat phrase, that). This is Blat­ter's old Fi­fa at work. A deal done be­hind the scenes leav­ing us all won­der­ing what re­al­ly went on. This is ex­act­ly what Blat­ter was promis­ing to change when he was giv­en an­oth­er over­whelm­ing vote of con­fi­dence by the foot­ball world in Zurich at the start of the month. One Fi­fa mem­ber said he be­lieved Warn­er's de­par­ture rep­re­sent­ed a "start," but this is not so cer­tain. What if Bin Ham­mam, the man ac­cused of try­ing to buy votes with wads of dol­lar bills at an un­of­fi­cial meet­ing in Trinidad last month, now al­so re­signs?

Will we ever hear the truth of what re­al­ly went on? What about Warn­er's promise of a tsuna­mi? Did he ever re­al­ly know any­thing about oth­er Fi­fa mem­bers and has he now elect­ed to keep his mouth shut to save his rep­u­ta­tion and his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer back home? What will now hap­pen to all those Caribbean coun­tries and of­fi­cials who were paid the mon­ey and who are hold­ing on to it? Will the in­ves­ti­ga­tion still go ahead? Yes, Warn­er's de­par­ture from the ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee of Fi­fa will do won­ders to im­prove Fi­fa's im­age. But it still pos­es a lot of ques­tions about the way Fi­fa op­er­ates.