Gianni Infantino trumpets ‘new Fifa’s’ vast wealth at unopposed re-election
The last time football’s world governing body held a one-candidate election for president was eight years ago when the winner, Sepp Blatter, pledged to captain his Fifa “bateau” to calmer waters, before he was capsized in the ensuing tempest of corruption scandals.
This year in Paris Blatter’s thunderously ambitious replacement, the Swiss former Uefa secretary general Gianni Infantino, sailed to another unopposed re-coronation in an atmosphere around Fifa that was remarkably less stormy. He had greeted this annual gathering for the presidents and officials of football’s 211 countries by claiming his is “a new Fifa”, transformed from pariah status since his election in 2016.
“We have turned things around,” he maintained. “Fifa has gone from being toxic, almost criminal, to what it should be: an organisation that develops and cares about football.”
Infantino then regaled the convention hall with a roll call of his achievements: the fabulous success of last year’s World Cup, which Fifa says amassed three billion unique views around the globe and had a billion watching the final; VAR was introduced with no going back to mere human refereeing, the Women’s World Cup is about to kick off in France, spearheading a strategy to develop women’s football to 60 million participants by 2026.
There were hymns to football’s lifechanging properties, curiously similar to the old Fifa’s tunes Blatter sang: a vehicle for education, hope, “trust, integrity, equality, human rights”. Referring to a speech he made at a meeting in December of the G20 world economic powers, Infantino said: “I was invited to talk about the impact football can have in an ever more divided world: we are one of the things that can bring people together rather than divide them.”
But the weightiest ballast for Fifa’s supertanker, cause of the general air of satisfaction on deck, which Infantino knowingly emphasised, is the vast stack of dollars in the hold. For all the scandals, blown open most infamously by the arrests of Fifa high-ups in Zurich at the dawn of Blatter’s reelection in 2015, football is ever more phenomenally loved and popular. So Fifa’s trademarked World Cup means it owns in a divided, digital world the most lucrative content with which television can bring people together.
The bulk of this congress was taken up with recitations of Fifa’s eye-watering – and, here, immensely crowdpleasing – amounts of rolling revenue. With sponsorship and other World Cup rights having been sold, as Infantino justifiably said, “when people said nobody would want to associate with Fifa”, the tournament raked in $5.4bn. In total Fifa made $6.4bn in 2014-18.
One telling detail in Fifa’s annual report indicated the rising power of China. Of the seven main Fifa commercial partners, five World Cup sponsors and eight “regional supporters”, whose endorsements amounted to $1.7bn, seven were Chinese.
“Chinese businesses had an unprecedented presence at the 2018 World Cup,” the report said.
Talk around Fifa has turned already to whether China will bid to host the 2030 World Cup. Qatar survived all challenges to it hosting in 2022, including Infantino’s failed effort to expand the tournament from 32 to 48 teams, while the US, Canada and Mexico are confirmed to host in 2026.
The English FA, always game for a bid after missing out for 2006 and 2018, is conducting a feasibility study for a joint 2030 pitch with Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland. But if China does decide to bid, the FA is likely to view that as so strategically significant to Fifa that it may not be worth spending time, money and energy on a rival effort.
Infantino acknowledged that if China is to bid a change would be needed to the rules that a regional confederation must miss two World Cups before it can host again. Qatar’s hosting in 2022 as part of the Asian Football Confederation would mean China not being eligible until 2034, but Infantino hinted the change will be made to reduce the rotation to only one tournament and thereby accommodate a Chinese 2030 bid. “For me, the more the merrier – the more bidders we have, the happier I am,” he said.
Speaking seven languages through his presidential address but keenly aware of one all his audience understands, Infantino and his executives repeatedly stressed how much of the booming revenues are going to the national associations. At the contested post-Blatter 2016 election, when Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain was a credible opponent, Infantino famously swung the room when he told the countries: “The money of Fifa is your money.”
He ran that line again here. “Fifa’s money is your money,” he said. “Your money, for the development of football.”
Several times they were told how much they have had under the “Forward” development programme and how much more they can look forward to: $1.079bn since its launch in 2016, a further £1.7bn to 2022.
Taking his turn with the same figures, Fifa’s finance committee chairman, Alejandro Domínguez, told the hall: “I dare say we should have a round of applause here for the president.” Which they duly had.
Fifa is adamant this mega-money, $6m to each association over four years, is building targeted, concrete football projects, many in poorer countries, and is not pork-barrel politics for local officials who could pocket it. Fifa’s administrators say they have robust checks, release money only according to specified “milestones” on projects, and conduct central audits.
They point to the six-year, sixmonth ban handed down by Fifa’s ethics committee in March to the former Oceania president David Chung for “offering and accepting gifts” and the eight-year ban of the same confederation’s former general secretary Tai Nicholas for misappropriating funds in relation to a Forward-funded HQ programme, the Home of Football in New Zealand.
“We’re not spending it on dodgy deals,” Infantino said, “we’re investing it with you and checking that [the projects are] done.”
Infantino has pounded on unscathed from his administration’s removal in 2017 of the ethics committee chairmen who had mounted preliminary investigations into him and the ousting of the governance committee chairman Miguel Maduro, who maintains pained concerns about Fifa’s workings.
Over days of Fifa business in Paris there was not a whisper about that landmark early brutality and delegates were invited to approve Infantino for another term by “acclamation” rather than through the farce of a one-man actual election which the football world lampooned in 2011. This meant, it was explained, that Infantino would be duly elected for the job, which had a $2.5m salary package last year, by a round of applause. Thumping home the scale of Infantino’s ascendancy the vice-president with the job of explaining that was Sheikh Salman, his beaten rival of 2016.
The applause came as a ripple rather than a wave and Infantino returned for a victory speech. He said he was humbled, then repeated many of his achievements, including the $2.75bn Fifa has in its reserves.
The congress, overall, was notably calm, compliant and pleased with itself, a testament above all to football’s phenomenal power and currency in an uncertain and volatile world.