NOS Football•
Michel Platini has lashed out at Gianni Infantino, the president of world football association FIFA. “Unfortunately, Infantino has increasingly become an autocrat since the pandemic,” the former president of the European football association UEFA said in an interview with the British newspaper The Guardian.
“I think he has lost the battle. There is less democracy than in Sepp Blatter’s time,” says Platini.
Infantino was Platini’s vice-president at UEFA from 2009 to 2015. “He was a good No. 2, but not a good No. 1,” Platini says. “He has done very well at UEFA, but he has one problem: he likes rich and powerful people, the ones with money. That is his character. He was like that as number 2, but he was not yet the boss.”
Infantino was already accused in December of “grotesque abuse of power”, partly because of his bromance with US President Donald Trump.
The FIFA president initiated the FIFA Peace Prize, which he awarded to Trump, after the president missed out on the Nobel Peace Prize. Critics argue that Infantino’s peace prize is mainly intended to win Trump’s favor, in view of the upcoming World Cup this summer in the US, Mexico and Canada.
Infantino and Trump have had good ties for some time. For example, football director Infantino appeared on stage among more than twenty world leaders during the Gaza peace summit in Egypt.
Questionable payment
About ten years ago, it seemed for a long time that Platini, not Infantino, would succeed Sepp Blatter as FIFA president.
But then Platini and Blatter were suspended by FIFA in 2015 over a dubious payment of 1.8 million euros four years earlier, just after the awarding of the World Cups to Russia and Qatar and Blatter’s re-election as president. However, last year they were acquitted of corruption for the second time by the Swiss court on appeal.
“I was destined to become president of FIFA,” the now 70-year-old Frenchman says now. “Everything happened because they didn’t want it. The suspension was a great injustice and essentially politically motivated. A group of people decided to kill me.”
Traitors
Platini wants to emphasize that he does not see Infantino, who at the time worked as UEFA secretary general, as one of his “traitors”. “No, he took advantage of the situation, but was not one of the instigators,” he says. “Infantino wanted to become president of UEFA, which meant he pushed me towards FIFA.”
The situation at FIFA has only gotten worse since then, Platini says. “You can say what you want about Blatter, but his problem was mainly that he wanted to remain in power at FIFA forever. But he was good for football. The people who now govern football have no heart for the sport.”
More former football players
Platini, a three-time Ballon d’Or winner, would like to see more former footballers take up managerial positions. “It’s not an easy job, so there aren’t many people who want to do it. You have to campaign tirelessly and it costs a lot of money.”
“But it would be better for democracy if there was healthy competition with new ideas. It’s not always about football, it’s about the people involved.”
“My greatest hope is that more and more former players will join football governing bodies so that they can organize these institutions and protect the sport internationally,” he says. “That’s who I am and what I’ve done.”
