I don’t know how much attention Mohamed bin Hammam got in the United States.

His run against Sepp Blatter for the Fifa presidency was a big deal in much of the soccer world, and particularly here in the Gulf, where the idea of a Qatari as boss of Fifa planet was a major news story.

It all flew to pieces, of course. The allegations of bribery at a meeting in Trinidad, the provisional suspension of bin Hammam from all football activities, his dropping out of the election, the resultant coronation of Blatter for a fourth term …

And then, a few days ago, the final, lifetime ban of bin Hammam, a ban he plans to fight all the way to the Swiss civil courts, if necessary.

My take on bin Hammam?

I think he could have been a very good leader for Fifa. Really.

And I wrote just that for the Monday editions of The National.

I probably am one of the handful of journalists to have been in the same room with both Sepp Blatter and Mohamed bin Hammam over the past eight months. Sepp was in Abu Dhabi for the Fifa Club World Cup in December, and then I ran into MBH at the Asian Cup in January, when I was in Doha for the final.

Comparing how those two guys handled themselves at press conferences is not a foolproof way to decide which man might be the more competent leader, but bin Hammam certainly came out ahead, in my view.

Blatter at times can be almost sappy when he gets into “football making the world a better place” … but also convincing. But, too, he can be thin-skinned, easily distracted and at times almost rambling. Like a 75-year-old man might sometimes be.

Bin Hammam is 62, 13 years younger than Blatter, but he seems more like a generation removed. He seems far hipper, far more connected, far more modern. He has his own blog. I’m certain he knows about Twitter, and I’d be surprised if Sepp knows anything about it at all. He strikes me as one of those guys who may not even have an e-mail account.

Bin Hammam also seems more connected with a multicultural world. He is from the Gulf, he has worked in Kuala Lumpur for a decade … he just seems more connected than Blatter, who seems fairly seriously Eurocentric even though, we must concede, he has routinely gotten overwhelming support from what we used to call the Third World in Fifa elections.

Bin Hammam also presented something very different to business as usual.

He is not Sepp.

So many weirdnesses have gone down on his watch, it seemed like a good idea to try someone else. And if that guy seemed to be smart and progressive, and positioning himself as a reformer, as well … so much the better.

I now have great doubts that Fifa will be able to cure itself from within. Sepp’s new “zero tolerance” for corruption so far seems to be aimed almost solely at bin Hammam and anyone who happened to be around him in Trinidad, back in May. Is that reform? Or a vendetta?

Mohamed bin Hammam might have made a difference. Now, we will never know.