Morning all.
As a way of not starting today’s blog with a non-update update about Vinicius Junior, let’s look at the story broken yesterday about FIFA in The Times and Financial Times. Basically, the plan is, and FIFA have confirmed this, to set up a subsidiary company (FIFA Forward Enterprise) which will sell stakes in the commercial rights of the World Cup, Womens’ World Cup, and Club World Cup.
The Guardian (and everyone else) report: “Thrive Capital, an investment company founded by Joshua Kushner – the brother of Donald Trump’s son‑in-law Jared Kushner – is leading the search for investors.”
FIFA say the revenue generated from this venture would then be redistributed to the 211 national associations. Which is, of course, how you sell something as egregious and wrong as this. We’re doing it for you! For the good of the game! Which, of course, we all know is complete bollocks. This is, by any other measure, a bribe. Much like FIFA renting offices in a New York building owned by Donald Trump that essentially lie vacant.
The last World Cup generated an estimated $13bn in revenue for FIFA. Let that sink in for a moment. It is an extraordinary amount of money, and I think sometimes we get a bit blindsided as to just how much. Here’s a nice explainer to put it in more context:
– 1 Million Seconds: Equals approximately 11.5 days – just over a week and a half.
– 1 Billion Seconds: Spans nearly 31.7 years.
The reporting also states that after Gianni Infantino’s fourth term as FIFA president is over, he would then shift into a role as commissioner for this new enterprise. How convenient! The challenge for football now is to ensure that this power-hungry ghoul doesn’t get that fourth term. I have no idea how it happens, but clearly he is a grave danger to the game itself, and is using FIFA for his own ends.
After his borderline paranoid rant on Instagram the other day, in which he accused those who dared to be critical of any part of the last World Cup of ‘hate’, he obviously feels comfortable enough to bring forward something like this so soon. Whether he’s emboldened because of his consolidation of power, his association with the Trump regime (about which he is being called to answer questions and I hope they are uncomfortable ones if that actually happens), or simply blinded by living in the ivory tower and lack of connection to the real world, it doesn’t really matter.
What matters is that every decision he makes is about making himself and FIFA richer and more powerful. He can dress it up as being for the benefit of the game, but that just does not stand up to any scrutiny. Nothing he has done during his tenure has been about the game of football, it’s been about revenue generation. If the job of FIFA president was to simply make money, then he might have a leg to stand on, but there are greater responsibilities than that.
This is about privatisation and profiteering, nothing more, nothing less. It is an abomination of a plan of from a man so deluded by his perceived power and influence that he thinks he can get away with anything. And make no mistake, if he gets away with this, there’s nothing he won’t do to the game of football, and it will come at the expense of all of us who love it.
UEFA have already come out to condemn the idea, which isn’t to say they’re perfect by any means, but we should all be glad to see it. Six of the eight quarter-finalists in the last World Cup were European nations, and that ought to provide some leverage if those national associations – many of whom have already backed Infantino – have the balls to speak out about this also. It’s also worth pointing out that FIFA is not just Gianni Infantino. There are many people of stature and wider-influence involved in that association who now, if they really do care about football, must be public in their condemnation of this plan.
Reportedly the FIFA council, the organisation’s decision making body, were unaware of this plan and not even included in its development. Which should tell you something about how Infantino is operating here. A mad king, obsessed with fame and money, doing whatever he feels like doing. Or, to put it another way, implementing a plan that will ultimately benefit those close to the politicians he’s spent years cosying up to in the most shameless and vulgar display of brown-nosing the world has ever seen. He is a sycophantic, obsequious, bootlicker of the worst kind, but a real danger to football, and unless he’s stopped now, I shudder to think the damage he will do in the years to come.
As I said in my post-World Cup final blog, football has already been corrupted to a level which should make us all uncomfortable. The response to that shouldn’t be ‘Oh well, there’s nothing we can do, let’s just make it even more corrupt’. It should be to push back, however possible, because there has to be a better way to run the game than this.
There has to be, and the nuclear option of disbanding an organisation like FIFA, which is increasingly unfit for its main purpose, has to be on the table.
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In a small Vinicius Junior update, Sky Sports reported yesterday he would not be sold this summer. Which, I suspect, is information more likely to have come from the manager than the boardroom. It doesn’t mean it’s incorrect, I just don’t know that it’s 100% definitive. The saga continues, let’s see what happens next.
Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. Have a good one folks.
