Every week, acquaintances with red-yellow roots share their vision of Go Ahead Eagles and everything surrounding it. It is Edwin Lugt’s turn for the last time in 2025 and he watches the upcoming World Cup from a sunny Sydney.
Gianni Infantino: FIFA’s sun king without a moral compass
Next year’s World Cup will be a war of attrition.
Not only for the viewers, because the tournament lasts almost 7 weeks, but also for the players.
FIFA’s commercial appetite led to an expansion from 32 to 48 teams and to the choice to spread the tournament over three countries.
The result: extreme temperature differences between stadiums that can influence the sporting course of the tournament.
In Vancouver, Seattle and Mexico City the temperature at kick-off is around 20 degrees. In Dallas, Houston and Atlanta the same temperature can be achieved artificially, thanks to air conditioning. This is beneficial for the Dutch team, because two group matches will be played in cooled stadiums.
But in cities such as Miami, Monterrey and Guadalajara it is a different story: at kick-off between 28 and 34 degrees, and on the field even up to 40 degrees.
Not a truly level playing field, with inequality being further increased if a team that played its group matches in a ‘cool climate’ and/or in a ‘cooled stadium’ has to play football a few days later in a stadium with extreme heat – with a possible temperature difference of up to 20 degrees.
Anyway, as we now know, FIFA is no longer about football, it’s all about money and power. And at the center of that universe is boss Gianni Infantino.
Through the better slip and slide he rose from the equally depraved UEFA to the throne of FIFA. In Nyon and Zurich it is rarely about quality, but all the more about unconditional loyalty, licking the right heels and strategic elbow bumps – sideways or down that is.
And so this megalomaniac Swiss has been able to use everything and everyone for his benefit for almost 10 years by dividing and conquering.
Did we think we had reached the bottom with the thoroughly corrupt Sepp Blatter? Infantino has now dug an underground floor. Compared to Gianni, Blatter could almost be considered for the imaginary ‘FIFA Integrity Award’.
Infantino’s ego knows no bounds. For example, during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, television crews were told that he had to appear on screen at least once in every match. And the new FIFA Club World Cup trophy casually bears the inscription: “Inspired by FIFA president Gianni Infantino”. You just have to think about it.
The absurd thing is that he just gets away with it – in fact, world leaders seem to actually take him seriously. How he does it, he does it – and that in itself deserves admiration.
For example, all of us Gianni was not only present at the G20 summit in Bali (2022), but he was even allowed to give a speech, calling for dialogue, peace and humanitarian corridors.
And earlier this year he appeared at the international peace summit in Egypt (Sharm el-Sheikh), where world leaders met to discuss “peace, truce and reconstruction of Gaza”.
Nobody knows why a chairman of a sports association is walking around there. Maybe because there were cameras. Anyway, one hand washes the other: politicians in turn love to be spotted next to him on the terrace of honor at a match.
The absolute highlight — or rather: low point — took place last weekend during the World Cup draw. There, Infantino presented the FIFA Peace Prize, invented from scratch, to ‘his friend’ Donald Trump.
No open procedure, no public nominations, no transparent selection criteria, no jury. Nothing. But it didn’t spoil the fun. Infantino had his moment again.
And that FIFA Peace Prize remains. There will even be a real “social responsibility” committee that will decide on the allocation from now on. Sounds responsible, inclusive and moral – until it became known who the chairman is: Zaw Zaw, the boss of the Myanmar Football Association.
The US State Department once described him as an accomplice of Myanmar’s ruthless military junta. In short: someone who should rather be the subject of an international commission of inquiry than become chairman of a peace prize committee.
But hey, this is FIFA. It is above all laws, above all shame and above every moral compass.
And at the top is Gianni himself: the sun king of global football. Directors bow, smile and imaginary kiss his hands, in the fervent hope of gaining his favor.
That they thereby make themselves ridiculous and unbelievable?
Oh well. Within the international football world, it is the price of career opportunities: surrendering principles, parking your backbone.
Not my cup of tea.
