May 16 – He may have turned up four hours late, and have key members of his ‘football family’ walk out on him at the interval in protest, but FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino barely missed a beat as he rattled through all the talking points that in his ivory tower make him a global powerbroker and now seemingly bigger than the sport he was elected to administer.
Infantino ran his Congress in the way that the Chinese Communist Party likes to administer its own iron fist of democracy.
Members applauded – but only when told to by the boss, and usually only for the sterling (read dollar) work of the administration. Votes were taken without a single vote ever going against the party in power’s expectations (not even someone pressing the wrong button by mistake – though that would likely be a capital offence in this version of FIFA).
There was one nasty moment for the ruling party when Susan Shalabi, a Palestinian FA vice president and the only person in the whole congress to speak from the floor (blimey, a woman as well, how did she get in?), gave an empassioned and brilliantly crafted speech from the floor with no little emotion. It was met with spontaneous applause from the whole audience – bar the Israelis. The applause threatened to continue for an embarrassingly long time before Infantino cut it short – no added time extensions in this version of Congress football.
Things were then put back in order by FIFA’s version of Cerberus (the multi-headed hound of Hades that guards the gates of the underworld to prevent the dead from leaving), general secretary Matthias Grafstrom who swiftly dispatched the Palestinian plight to the waste bin, again, and returned the agenda to the happy-dappy Disney-like celebration of how damn clever, hard working, full of good people and so very rich we all are under Voldemort’s leadership.
And those left in the room after the UEFA walk out lapped it up, no doubt rubbing their hands greasily together as they counted their hard-earned coin.
“Our governance is stronger than ever,” screamed Infantino from the pulpit. Thank goodness he had arrived in time to tell us this, shortly before the membership blindly elected the new ethics committee. No names of who they were electing were displayed or spoken, come on guys, just push the button, we’ve got your backs.
Of course no Infantino address would be complete without celebration of his midas touch – this time it was all about the doubling of the budget for the 2023-26 cycle to $13 billion. “This allows us to implement the FIFA Forward programme which has increased in size over the nine years (of my incredible leadership) by seven times. Now we can really invest all over the world in football.” Because, of course, football wasn’t the world’s game until Gianni got there.
There was of course a reference to his new BFF, Donald Trump, the reason he was late.
“It is important to say one thing very clear. There was a meeting last week with the World Cup Task Force with the president of the United States, and the world is welcome in America. Of course the players and all of us, and all the fans – everyone is welcome.
“Those who want to create trouble, they are not welcome, we don’t want troublemakers. In fact we want trouble makers out of football.”
Good to know because Iran have already qualified, they love football and they have lots of fans, lots of them.
Certainly no opportunity to over hype the Club World Cup should be missed and it wasn’t – danger is we start to believe it.
“Players from 86/87 countries will be there – now clubs are multi-national clubs. It is history, it is a first, it will be a huge success… DAZN (the Saudi backed TV rights holder) is granting everyone, every person in the world free access – because football is for everyone. When it comes to revenues and costs we don’t have to touch the reserves. Everything will go back into football,” crowed Infantino.
“There is the need for the world to have a global club competition. Some coaches and players are a bit negative, some a bit positive…”
Cue the sycophantic video of fantastically overpaid individuals about to trouser a bucketload more cash telling us why we love this competition – can’t we be the judge of that or is independent thought now outlawed in the FIFA statutes as well?
In his closing remarks Infantino treated us to a brief trip round the amazing work he and his team are doing, lest we forget all that has gone before us in this congress in the last excruciating three hours.
For the record: two new committees for men’s and women’s football – players and coaches because the “voices of legends are important to make the game better”; changes to the laws – goalkeepers, offsides and handballs; U17 girls and boys every year; “we should organise U15 world football festivals”; FIFA Clearing House distributed $150 million to almost 700 training clubs worldwide; the $100 million FIFA Global Citizen Education fund; “I think we should do more with disabled”… so much to do.
Then it was back to the central theme. “We are uniting the world – we are uniting today here in Ascunsion,” he proclaimed, despite being late to the unification himself, and then have a key group of his inner sanctum walk out at coffee break. (Check dictionary definition of uniting).
There was also one last plug for the Club World Cup: “We will continue to invest not just to grassroots but also in shaping professional football… Club football is very important and we decided to create the Club World Cup (actually you expanded it, you didn’t create it, but let’s not split hairs on such a great day of unification).
The last bit of business was the announcement of Vancouver as the next host of the FIFA Congress in World Cup year. What an opportunity. Perhaps he Infantino can get his best buddy POTUS to visit the 51st state for a celebrity visit and a kick about with the legends. Now that really would be something.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1747389236labto1747389236ofdlr1747389236owedi1747389236sni@n1747389236osloh1747389236cin.l1747389236uap1747389236