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On Soccer: FIFA’s Message Is at the Mercy of the Wrong Messengers

ZURICH — The FIFA officials tried hard. They did. On Thursday afternoon, the acting president and the acting secretary general and the permanent reform committee chief (who just seems to like acting) wanted desperately to talk about change. About progress. About the future.

It didn’t quite work, of course. A big part of that was the arrests, only hours earlier, of two more FIFA vice presidents in another police raid at the Baur au Lac hotel that made news around the world. But the arrests were not the only reason that most of the questions from the news media here did not focus on FIFA’s hopeful message of the day; there was also the matter of the messengers.