The relentless accumulation of allegations, even if confined in geographic scope to the Americas, makes this latest oeuvre by the United States District Court Eastern District of New York every bit as bleakly compelling as the recent 300-plus page Pound report into allegations of widespread doping in Russia.

To that extent, it is tempting to see the new proposals for reforming the beleaguered body’s governance as a particularly obtuse example of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

But there is one element of the proposed reforms that does flag up some prospect of real change and which may, I fancy, win the whole creaking enterprise a little breathing-space. This is the idea of engineering a substantial increase in the presence of women at FIFA’s top table, with “a minimum of one female representative elected as a Council member per Confederation”.

That is to say a minimum of six women on the new 36-member FIFA Council that is set to replace the FIFA Executive Committee, a brand now so discredited and toxic that it is to be consigned to oblivion.

This is much more than tokenism. It has been plain for some time that the Women’s World Cup constitutes FIFA’s best chance of reinforcing a financial model that leaves it completely dependent on one barnstorming competition - the FIFA World Cup - every four years.

Without meaning to imply for one moment that women’s voices should be confined to the women’s game, a sharp increase in representation should ensure that realisation of this healthy - and realisable - development is prioritised and brought closer.

In other respects, the outcome of last week’s deliberations in Zurich left me despairing that the old men responsible for administering this great game will ever embrace the new way of thinking that is so plainly required.

In the world of FIFA, things grow like Topsy. Why? Because that is how you avoid making difficult decisions. This week provided two examples.

First, the Council: it won’t really be possible to judge whether the desirable “clear separation of political and management functions” that is being aspired to has been achieved until the detail of this week’s proposals is worked out; perhaps not until the proposed new system has been up and running for a couple of years.

What does seem clear is that the Council - which will be responsible for “setting the organisation’s overall strategic direction, while the general secretariat will oversee the operational and commercial actions required to effectively execute that strategy” - will have a more constrained range of functions than the old Executive Committee.

Why then does it require 50 per cent more people? Under this week’s proposals, the Oceania Football Confederation (OFC), which has 11 Member Associations much the most prominent of which is New Zealand, would have no fewer than three Council members; CONMEBOL, the South American Confederation, with 10 Member Associations, albeit including some very prominent football nations, would have five Council members.

A smaller body would avoid this waste of resources, but of course that might have meant some individuals having to sacrifice their top table places.

Also symptomatic of the failure to break away from the old way of thinking, incidentally, is the proposal that Council members “will be elected by the member associations of the respective region” ie the Confederations, and not the FIFA Congress.

While it would still be almost impossible to prevent regional bloc-voting, election by Congress would at least underline that Council members need to have a loyalty and accountability first and foremost to FIFA and not their regions if this is to be made to work. I think the new women members might come to appreciate the importance of that distinction particularly quickly.

The second example of FIFA’s predisposition towards expanding things came with this week’s discussion of a 40-team World Cup. This, we are told, is to be further debated - not least, one imagines, during the ongoing Presidential election campaign.

Again, you can understand why this happens: one region, usually Europe, is deemed to be overrepresented; they have no wish to countenance a reduction in their allocated slots; so expansion presents itself as a mutually acceptable solution, permitting a rebalancing of regional representation without anyone having to endure an absolute cut in the number of their acts taking part in the circus.

I would not be so presumptuous to proclaim that a 40-team World Cup would definitely be a mistake. I would say that present methods of deciding the flagship tournament’s size are profoundly unsatisfactory.

Surely, in a governing body worth its salt, this is a clear case for a panel of experts, from inside the game and beyond, to weigh up the pros and cons and come up with a considered recommendation that would be put to Congress. Perhaps it is a job for the new football stakeholders’ committee. It is certainly a decision that would benefit from regional politics being kept out of it for as long as feasible.

But then that is the sort of new thinking that, even in this moment of deepest crisis, the FIFA top brass seem incapable of. To all appearances, they still just don’t get it.