Is Gianni Infantino’s time up as Fifa president? - The Latest
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This is The Guardian.
There comes a point at which the straw breaks the camel's back. The idea that you would run to President Trump to save your skin when your job is under threat is quite comical. It is encouraging that we've seen this groundswell of opinion against FIFA, but I just wish some of it had been crystallised and harnessed a little bit earlier. The damage that's been done to football could have been averted.
From the Guardians today in Focus, this is The Latest with me, Lucy Hough. FIFA president Gianni Infantino is under huge pressure to stand down after his very humiliating U-turn over the weekend over plans to sell off parts of the World Cup to private equity. Gianni Liu, you're a Guardian sports writer and columnist. Let's circle back to last week. I'm just wondering how you felt when you first heard the news of this scheme.
To be really brutally honest, kind of nonplussed by it. Really? Having covered FIFA and football for, what, 10, 15 years and seen the indignities and iniquities that FIFA has got up to, it's... It's almost kind of like a frog in boiling water. You see the latest, oh, well, obviously they've overturned a red card. Obviously they've given the World Cup to Russia. Obviously they're going to sell a part of it off. It didn't seem to me like a massive leap from the direction of travel that they were going in. Part of me wondered whether private equity or private investors might introduce a layer of accountability Almost that FIFA doesn't, you know, could private equity do a worse job of organising a World Cup than FIFA do?
Also, all these thoughts swimming through my head. And I guess for the broader footballing community, it's really hard to know what the line is. There comes a point, and we saw this with the Super League as well, the European Super League a few years ago, that people will almost tune out and tune out and tune out. But there comes a point at which the straw breaks the camel's back and a cascade of opprobrium rains down on everyone's head. And it's always really hard to know where that point is. But there was something that's really emblematic about the idea of, even though FIFA would not describe it like this, of selling the World Cup. That is very evocative. So I think that is what's got everyone really exercised.
Yeah. And Gianni Infantino obviously being the person that was supposed to sort of clean up FIFA after the Sepp Blatter years and all the allegations of corruption during that period. In a statement, obviously trying to save his own back, Infantino said that it had become clear that the project had created divisions and that his intent was to bring all interested parties back together in the coming days and weeks. But it really feels like the opposite has happened. UEFA in particular last week threatened to boycott any future World Cup, but they've now gone even further than that, seemingly really putting pressure on Infantino to go.
Yes, and that pressure appears to be ramping up this week. There's a story in The Guardian this morning about how CONCACAF, which represent the North American, Central American, Caribbean nations, are the latest federation that is going to look at, that is allegedly going to look at, putting up a candidate or backing a candidate to stop Infantino. Arsene Wenger, who's FIFA's head of development, who's been pretty quiet on this for the last couple of weeks, he's come out this morning and said, look, this has nothing to do with me. I didn't want it.
How did FIFA’s proposed private equity sale of World Cup rights first emerge and spark outrage?
There's an internal staff memo from Infantino's right-hand man, essentially, the general secretary, Matthias Grafstrom, to staff at FIFA saying that this is a regrettable episode. Right. And that the organization is bigger than any one event or individual, which, you know, it sounds, it is coded language, but it does sound kind of ominous. And the fact that Infantino rode back on it so quickly and is almost trying to, he's trying to shore up support. You know, you can guarantee that he is calling his allies. He is ringing around saying,
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