Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance. The FIFA president Gianni Infantino is in the headlines again after he tried and failed to get Israel and Palestine delegates to take a photo together shaking hands in Canada last night. Here was the Palestinian delegate Jibril Rajoub after the incident.
Could I shake hands... with someone representing a fascist and racist government and defending even the policies of this government. I don't think that I have to shake hands. I don't think that he is a qualified partner to me.
Chapter 2: What incident involving Gianni Infantino is discussed at the start?
While I understand, I recognize that the Israeli Federation has the right to organize, develop a sport, but within their internationally recognized borders. Was he ready to say that for the Palestinians?
We'll discuss how all of this looks for FIFA. I'm joined now by sports correspondent with the 42, Gavin Cooney. Gavin, you're very welcome to the programme. I would advise any of our listeners this morning, if they have a couple of minutes to spare, to go on the internet, go on YouTube and put in the search engine Infantino FIFA Congress handshake.
And it's probably one of the most uncomfortable two minutes of footage I've watched in quite some time. So can you explain exactly what happened here?
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.
Chapter 3: What was the Palestinian delegate's reaction to the handshake request?
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. in his opening address to delegates yesterday, that FIFA not only has a power to unite the world, FIFA has a responsibility to unite the world because politics won't. And that would be a defensible viewpoint from Gianni Infantino if he didn't consistently align himself with political figures who are doing the very opposite of uniting the world.
Let's just go back to what's happening on stage again, because it does last about two or three minutes. And the Israeli representative is just standing there on the stage, motionless, looking uncomfortable. Rajub, who we played there, he continues to give this impassioned plea out to the crowd.
And Fantino was just standing there sort of trying to take his arm, trying to, I think, maybe cajole him. it appears, maybe trying to encourage him to actually shake hands with his Israeli representative. And there's reports suggesting that he didn't just do this once, that there was a second attempt to try and bring the men together. So why is he so desperate for the photo in this moment?
I think it's to kind of give kind of a powerful image to support that view that he has that football can unite the world, that this is, you know, above politics. This is, you know, to give the children hope that football can be something very different. I would imagine that that's what is motivating there. Again, his slogan being football uniting the world. He's talked previously in really...
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Chapter 4: How did Infantino's actions reflect on FIFA's image?
But this is what happened.
I mean, there was a suggestion in some of the reports I was reading this morning. that the motivation for this photograph was because he knew he was going to announce his candidacy for a third term. So it was a suggestion that this was all pre-planned because it would give him this fabulous photo on which to launch this third term.
yeah maybe he doesn't need it though i mean he's going to he's going to run for a third term he'll almost certainly run unopposed and in a kind of a remarkable uh twitter situation uh remarkable situations he's got endorsements from i think it's the uh the african and the south american confederations before he even announced his candidature so um i don't think he needs you know this powerful political image to kind of get him over the line with in that respect
He seems to remain very popular among many of his membership base, partly because the World Cup has become such an enormous financial cash cow that he's distributing more money to these national associations than ever before. And the more money that is coming from the incumbent never hurts his re-election chances, does it?
No, absolutely not. I mean, you were being very kind there and you said this attempt to bring these two hostile partners together to shake hands in this beautiful moment was naivety. Was it that or is it just arrogance?
Oh, I'd say it could be arrogance as well, Ciara. I mean, this is a guy, you know, it's amazing to think back. I mean, he was, you know, he was elected FIFA president just over 10 years ago after, you know, the disaster of the blot, the fall of blotter and disgrace and, and the grubbies revelations from the FBI investigation and the arrests in the Swiss hotel.
And he was promising a new FIFA, like away from the greed and the opulence of Blatter's era to the point where he flew EasyJet to an IFAB meeting, basically a meeting of the decision-making board on football's rules in which he sits as FIFA president. He flew on EasyJet there to show that, you know, I'm bringing football back to the people. I am the normal one.
This is a great sign of humility, is it?
Exactly, his sign of humility. And then we read that ahead of that Congress in Vancouver, FIFA had requested on his behalf a security detail in a motorcade below that only of the Pope and on a par with Donald Trump or any visiting head of state where he would be allowed, you know, skip red lights, etc. So how things have changed, you know.
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Chapter 5: What happened during the FIFA Congress in Vancouver?
Yeah, no, that was a real old-time Gianni Infantino moment there on the eve of the Qatar World Cup. And it was of a piece with a wider pushback against, obviously there was a huge amount of media scrutiny and media criticism on the hosting of the World Cup in Qatar, given it necessitated... the labour of migrant workers which transgress various kind of labour and human rights.
That was of a piece with his pushing back against the media criticism, accusing the Western media of hypocrisy, saying the West should apologise for 300 years of crimes in various countries.
But four years on, he's now embracing Donald Trump and has given explicit endorsement to Donald Trump's political views at a Miami forum last year saying, you know, America should be very happy with the presidency of Donald Trump. And we've seen him at the inauguration almost dressed like Trump with a long red tie and wearing that red baseball cap.
And America are not exactly apologizing for the crimes of the West over 200 or 300 years. They're very much reasserting not only the West, but their dominance of it. And the fact that Infantino can say, I am Arab, I am disabled, I am gay, I am a migrant worker,
Also kind of does encapsulate the unbelievable expediency of FIFA that really increasingly you have to wonder what they actually stand for. Beyond that, we want to make as much money as we can to fund the game globally through the World Cup. And as a result, we will kind of just go along with whatever the host country wants.
So in Qatar, it was pushing back against the Western media and it was taking the beer from the stadiums at the last minute.
minute in the u.s it's uh you know it's the ticket pricing um it's uh you know it's it's the it's kind of allowing the embracing american the american capitalist view of sports as entertainment deserving of only the the richest people in the world and we can see it as well with infantino's extraordinarily close relationship with donald trump right i mean we mentioned uh
We mentioned the Peace Prize there, like extraordinary, like to give this guy a Peace Prize a couple of months before he starts bombing one of the countries competing at the World Cup. And he's consistently popping up for photo ops at the Oval Office.
FIFA and Infantino defend that as a kind of a bear hug strategy, that we need to get close to Donald Trump to restrict some of his impulses and get some, you know, get some control over him to be able to carry this off, you know.
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