October 25 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino is a simple man. He hails from a simple Alpine small town and has a simplistic outlook on the big wide world. For a decade he was fighting FIFA, the arch enemy. And fighting hard. Now he is its boss. A victory that probably surprised him more than many of those who had given him little chance of winning, as the stand-in for Michel Platini that he was.
Infantino is also a shrewd man. What the powers that may be, failed to give him in terms of savoir faire, he compensates with back-handedness and dark smears of those he thinks are his enemies.
Infantino is also a narcissistic man – which is why he verily believes that people would take time out to be his enemy: frankly, people don’t care one way or the other – who enjoys the company of those that wield power, while falsely assuming that he wields power on their level. Now that, is a bit of a joke, isn’t it?
Infantino is also a man on a mission. Whatever that mission may be, it takes on traits of a solid misunderstanding of reality and his own worth.
The latest of his overegged ideas are two new tournaments: he wants the current Club World Cup and Confederations Cup abolished, and replaced by a new and expanded Club World Cup.
Secondly, he also wants to introduce a new global Nations League based on the format of UEFA’s Nations League, which started in September. Successfully, too.
This writer doesn’t even want to get involved in the plain money-grabbing stupidity of both proposals that he is peddling, presently in Africa at the meeting of FIFA’s Council which meets this morning.
It is far too obvious what simple Infantino wants: he needs to fill the FIFA coffers because if he doesn’t, he cannot fulfil the grandiose financial promises he has made to Member Associations. And it is election soon. And Infantino, being a simple man, does not want to wait until after election time, he wants (needs) the Saudi money to push down the throat of World Football.
Because Saudi money is what this is all about. Softbank as a pretext, and its Wealth Fund the vehicle. The same Crown Prince who may have an issue or two with what Turkey’s president Erdogan called the “premeditated murder” of the Washington Post columnist Kashoggi, is the engine behind the $25 billion b/s idea to sell the soul of football (if it ever had any of late) and make it just another money making machine for a few who laugh at the many who rejoice in a game is rapidly evolving away from the attractions that brought them to it in the first place
Infantino, being a shrewd man, thinks he can get away with anything, because he is also a narcissistic man (prone to illusions, as those types often are). So, what he thinks to be a wise move, namely to ally himself with a guy whose investment conference was boycotted by significant numbers of the world’s leading sycophants (no worries, they will all be back there soon), may turn out to be a stupid move.
Football fans are often not the most sophisticated people who rejoice in hedge fund schemes, complex derivatives and financial risk management of useless ideas or the total sell-out of things they hold dear: such as a good old game of football.
So, at a time when Saudi money really stinks and where Saudi is the least favoured flavour of the month (at least with a small number of people who still have an ounce or two of decency left), at a time when Saudi (co?)-financed the theft of broadcasting rights on an industrial scale, at this very time, intelligent Infantino is still babbling about a $25 billion deal because, well why? Because he just doesn’t get it, does he?
“Greed is good”, said legendary movie character Gordon Gecko, and his idiotic mantra resulted in subprime chaos and worldwide financial crises.
But Infantino is no Gecko. Hence the mantra is still his to this day, no matter how his half-baked plans may hurt football down the line (even more football? Seriously? Is that a good thing?).
Infantino should take a leaf out of UEFA’s book, these days written by Aleksander Ceferin and his able lieutenants. He should listen to the ECA and others. But what he does, is what a shrewd man would do (he thinks): he runs around talking to MAs and Clubs, telling them different stories, assuming that they don’t talk to each other in return. Errhm..
That is not Infantino, the intelligent man. That is Infantino the stupid man. So, let us see which Infantino will be the African Infantino this week. And don’t be surprised if Saudi money wins. Despite Kashoggi. And despite the broadcast rights thefts that endanger football’s broadcast economics.
Football is a greedy world, and Infantino continues to ferociously fuel that greed.
James Dostoyevsky is a Washington-based observer of politics and sports. He can be contacted at moc.l1731653138labto1731653138ofdlr1731653138owedi1731653138sni@o1731653138fni1731653138