BarcelonaFootball, the most loved sport and the one that moves the most money around the planet, has seen them in all colors in recent decades. Crises, scandals, dramas and political movements of all kinds. But if something hasn’t changed, it’s the most powerful figure of all, that of the FIFA president. For 25 years, FIFA has been run by a Swiss who has not played football. As if it were a joke, after 17 years of Joseph Blatter’s mandate, in 2016 the new president of the highest body of world football is another Swiss with a similar profile, Gianni Infantino. The two, in fact, were born in two towns separated by just seven kilometers.
Infantino (Brig, Switzerland, March 23, 1970) has been re-elected president at the FIFA congress in Kigali, Rwanda, where he has had no direct opponent. In fact, it hasn’t even been voted on. Given the absence of rivals, it has been proposed to elect him with an “ovation”, which has prevented him from seeing the opposing votes of delegations such as Germany or Norway. Infantino extends his power amid applause from his partners and friends, in a congress where, again, he has surprised with his speeches, this time comparing it to the genocide that Rwanda experienced. “The first time I visited this country, the African delegates told me they would not vote for me. But after visiting the Genocide Museum, I decided to do like Rwanda and not give up,” he explained.
The congress has been a pool of oil for a self-made man who climbed the FIFA structure in Blatter’s shadow, until he had a contact book so good that now hundreds of managers love him. Infantino, however, has plenty of critics. It doesn’t seem to affect him much, as you don’t need to be nice to rule FIFA. It is about knowing how the institution works, which people can vote in the electoral race to be president and to keep them happy. Big critics of Infantino, such as the big European leagues or top-tier clubs, do not have a vote in FIFA. So they attack him, but when the FIFA assemblies arrive, the Swiss ends up being given a standing ovation.
With Swiss and Italian nationality, Gianni Infantino studied law at the University of Freiburg. He joined UEFA in August 2000 to do work related to legal, commercial and professional matters. The son of Italian immigrants who made their fortune in the south of Switzerland, he had worked as secretary general of the International Center for Sports Studies (CIES) at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), and was previously an advisor to several football organizations . His experience with leagues such as the French or the Swiss was a good introduction card to enter FIFA, an entity that is based in Switzerland, his country.
Known for knowing all the finals of European competitions by heart, he was appointed in 2004 as director of legal affairs and club licensing. Infantino, who is fluent in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian, was elected in October 2009 as the new general secretary of FIFA, an ideal position that allowed him to lead the commission that had to oversee possible changes to the ‘body in 2015, when a scandal of payments and commissions affected FIFA. His mentor, Joseph Blatter, was hounded and his potential replacement, Frenchman Michel Platini, was also sanctioned in the same FIFA bribery case that Blatter was being investigated. Infantino, therefore, ended unexpectedly as a candidate for the presidency, and defeated in the elections of the year 2009 the Sheikh of Bahrain Al-Khalifa.
A promising start, an unsurprising development
It was a curious twist of fate. Blatter and Platini were sanctioned for a case of which they would be declared innocent years later. And who was supposed to help change FIFA to make it more transparent and democratic, Infantino, climbed to the presidency by choosing a leadership style that leaves no one indifferent. The first decisions he made in 2016 were promising, such as rejecting an annual salary of more than two million euros or choosing Fatma Samoura, a former United Nations official from Senegal, as FIFA’s general secretary. The problem was that Samoura, a seasoned diplomat, had little experience in the kind of sponsorship and television rights deals she would oversee in her new job, so she was making decisions alongside an Infantino who had begun to accumulate power. In a few months, it was already said at FIFA that he was taking decisions without consulting or explaining it to a large part of the organization’s senior managers.
One of his first successes came when it was his turn to speak to the United States Department of Justice. After seeing how Qatar won the elections to organize the 2022 World Cup precisely ahead of the United States, the judiciary of this country began an investigation to try to demonstrate the corruption that decided these elections. The problem is that they could only act in cases of crimes committed in their country, which is why they took advantage of a payment made by South Africa to Caribbean delegates in the 2010 World Cup selection process, since the money had gone through a american bank The case, which was supposed to bring down FIFA, ended with Blatter convincing the justice that FIFA was actually the victim of these corrupt managers. And as a reward, FIFA collected almost 200 million euros in compensation.
Seven years after reaching the presidency, Infantino’s power is greater than before. At the assembly in Kigali, where the representatives of the 211 national federations vote, there have been almost no critical voices, beyond the Norwegian Federation, which continues to demand that world football adhere to ethical codes and not support states with little democracies, such as Qatar. The other federations, on the other hand, support an Infantino who, following the example of Blatter, has taken care of the federations of smaller and poorer states by offering financial donations to build stadiums or training centers.
Support for Infantino, however, is not unanimous. There have been especially with the managers of European clubs, as well as with the players’ union. His great proposal to grow the World Cup, which from 2026 will have 48 qualified teams, 16 more than until now, has not been liked by everyone. Nor his idea of creating new competitions, such as a new Club World Cup. One of Infantino’s critics, in fact, is the president of the Spanish league, Javier Tebas, as well as Aleksander Ceferin, the president of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body. Infantino and Ceferin fell out in 2018, when Infantino asked the FIFA board to give him the authority to sign a $25 billion contract with an unknown investor to create new tournaments, which was later revealed to be a Japanese fund supported by Persian Gulf interests. When Infantino hinted that he wanted to propose that the World Cup be played every two years, instead of every four, Ceferin announced that he would stand up to the proposal by threatening a civil war in world football. Infantino withdrew the proposal, but his plan to expand the World Cup to 48 teams was voted on at the Kigali congress.
Infantino passed the test of the pandemic, as well as the World Cup organized in Qatar, where he threatened players and federations who organized demonstrations in favor of human rights. In a speech that marked him forever, he said: “Today I feel Qatari, today I feel Arab, today I feel African, today I feel gay, today I feel disabled, today I feel a migrant worker.” On the same day he said it, however, he achieved a major achievement: for the FIFA council to consider his first three-year term, from 2016 to 2019, not to count as such, as it came after his resignation of Blatter. Since FIFA’s statutes limit tenure to 12 years, Infantino used this trick and could now rule for 15 years.
The last few years have been devoted to strengthening ties with the states of the Persian Gulf, especially Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Thus he has obtained millions in sponsorship income for FIFA, money that is used to keep other delegates happy. The negotiations are usually carried out by himself, traveling up and down, with a presidential style that will last at least another four years. In fact, he is ignored if he lives in Switzerland or Dubai, while he lets himself be seen with celebrities and causes small scandals, such as that of Turkish chef Salt Bae, his good friend, who broke security protocols during the World Cup final. Infantino though, keep going. In this congress, only Germans and Norwegians have made their opposition clear. When criticized for defending the World Cup in Qatar, the president said: “The Europeans, the Westerners, teach a lot of lessons, and in the last 3,000 years we should apologize for the next 3,000 years before we continue to teach people lessons, for everything we Europeans have done to the world. I don’t have to defend Qatar. They can defend themselves. I defend football and justice. Many come here and they don’t care about these workers. FIFA does care, the football cares about it, and so does Qatar.” Now, its new partner is the Saudis. Infantino continues to do what he wants.
