UEFA president Gianni Infantino’s rare press comments at the weekend were delivered with his usual smugness. These were the comments of a career politician who is pretty sure he has his electoral votes in the bag, whatever the opposition does or says to the contrary.
As usual, his comments lacked any real substance and did not address the fundamental issues facing his leadership, but why should he? It wasn’t a victory speech, but it’s clear he believes he’s done all he needs to do to continue his FIFA presidency.
His main belief is that the “vast, vast majority” of football supports him. Depending on how that vast majority is measured, he may be right.
There are 211 FIFA members, organized into six confederations. Two of those confederation presidents have pledged their support: Africa and, at the end of last week, Asia. Two of the remaining confederations, South America and Oceania, can be considered a near deadlock, but only account for 21 votes. Concacaf has remained silent, but staff from the FIFA member association are doing a number of things in their nations. That leaves only UEFA.
So on those promises alone, he would be justified in taking his member associations for granted, the same member associations he tried to defraud with his half-baked railroad plan by selling all FIFA commercial rights, in perpetuity, to a new corporate entity backed by Thrive Capital.
The same member associations that changed with grant money in 15 million dollars for the next four-year cycle. It had budgeted $10 million per association, but after intervention by the presidents of Concacaf and UEFA, it was forced to increase it to $25 million and reduce restrictions on the criteria for releasing the funds, as well as how the funds could be used. It’s a big change that he had resisted.
This is the guy the ‘vast, vast majority’ of FIFA federations want to continue leading them. Wow! Why? Please give me the house numbers as I think they need double glazing, new life insurance, a wine investment plan and a change of energy supplier. Snake oil is snake oil.
Is there anything that can cause a tremor through this man-made mountain of support?
Maybe three obvious ones.
First, Confederation presidents do not speak for their member, as the AFC president learned when he joined the call for Infantino’s resignation at the beginning of August. He is certainly no political fool and while he has given Infantino the backing of the AFC, there is a significant faction that will not toe the line of the company being pushed through Qatar and, to a much lesser extent, Saudi Arabia.
Jordan’s Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, who ran twice for the FIFA presidency and whose withdrawal after the first round of voting in 2016 was the enabler of Infantino’s victory in the second round as his votes went to Infantino, tweeted at the weekend after the AFC Extraordinary Congress in Tokyo: “When it comes to the elections of each association and federation, there is no has elections of FIFA members. Therefore, any claims that have recently emerged that the members of the confederation or the FIFA council have a part in the vote are not relevant.”
The federations can vote for whoever they want, is the message. And they should be able to do so without fear of recrimination.
And that’s the second point that should send a shiver down Infantino’s spine. This fear of recrimination that has been so helpful to his leadership has been removed, perhaps ironically by the Confederacy presidents Prince Ali deposes. The fear of recrimination is around threats to withhold or delay grant money from national associations. Infantino has already been holding back the grant money and capping it at $10 million for the next cycle.
But now he has to promise that the money will be released: no strings attached, have a good and honest project plan. And it must release an additional $15 million to each nation.
Even the most fearful federations must realize that this grant money is really theirs by right. That for years they have been bribed and threatened for their own money. If they do not realize this, they have no place to lead their countries.
Which leads to the third potential mountain-shaking realization that Infantino’s boast of his “big, big” majority is actually not that. More than 50 of FIFA’s members have a population of less than 1 million, many of them only have a single league, but they are the basis of Infantino’s power, because they are the easiest to bully and threaten. But as a whole, these nations represent less than the population of Spain, the men’s and women’s FIFA World Cup champions. Spain only has one vote, they have more than 50. Proportional representation would suggest that this “big, big” majority is not the case. So do comparisons with the number of titles won, the number of leagues and players registered, the number of referees and coaches, etc. The long tail of the more than 50 federations is moving the dog.
What the over-50s should worry about is that if they become the deciding factor in Infantino’s re-election, they could be signing their own death warrant.
Do they really believe that supporting a regime that has so many allegations of corruption against it, that has repeatedly ignored its own statutes and has politicized and fractured the game to an unprecedented degree, will protect its equal status? The danger for them is that the real power of football, the nations that generate the players and the money that funds their subsidies, will decide that they are an integral part of the corruption that needs to be dealt with. Certainly, the “vast and vast” majority of the rest of the world sees them that way.
Infantino can blow a lot about the support he thinks he has and how much people love him, but he still doesn’t face or explain all the accusations leveled against him. There are 42 questions written in the letter that UEFA addressed to him to which the whole world needs full answers, not bullshit.
Infantino says he will answer them, as much as he can. Looks like more bull and obfuscation to come. In any other walk of life Infantino would have been sent packing in July. The only people who get away with this kind of behavior are the world’s biggest despots. These are the people he considers his friends. But even they must be uncomfortable with the international damage it is causing to their country’s reputation and images.
Paul Nicholson is the editor of Insideworldfootball. Contact him at (email protected)
