Gavin Cooney

That's excruciating to watch, isn't it?

So Gianni Infantino, the FIFA Congress, it was on in Vancouver this week.

That's basically FIFA's AGM where there are 211 member nations gather to vote on things and make various decisions.

And any member of any associate member can get up and address the Congress and representatives of both the Palestinian and the Israeli FAA.

did exactly that.

And after they had done both, the FIFA president Gianni Infantino asked Bo to get back on stage and pose for a photograph and shake hands as a symbol of football's power to unite.

I think the line he said, we have to show the children

that there's hope.

He didn't show the children that there's hope in that scene.

It was excruciating.

I don't really know what he expected to happen.

I mean, you can hear the passion in the voice of the Palestinian FA president, Jibril Rajoub, that you just played on.

played as a clip there and even directly in terms of even football governance i mean it was at a fifa congress two years ago that the palestinian fa called for the israeli fa to be suspended citing alleged breaches of fifa statutes in in israel's organizing matches on the occupied territory in the west bank fifa took almost two years to come back with a decision on that

The decision was, no, Israel aren't suspended, citing what FIFA described as the legal status and the complex legal situation of the West Bank.

So the Palestinian FA have brought that argument to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

So even on a sporting governance level, these two associations are in administrative conflict and are going before Cass.

The idea that Gianni Infantino thought he would get them to shake hands before the world is, let's be kind to him and say it's naive in the extreme.

But here it's also of a piece within Infantino's kind of self-image.

He's kind of, he's portraying himself now as this kind of quasi head of state and football with this kind of missionary zeal as a vehicle to, in his phrase, unite the world.

That was his vision.