While some powerful soccer federations are against him continuing on in the role, FIFA president Gianni Infantino won't be out of a job any time soon, Cathal Kelly writes.Darko Vojinovic/The Associated Press
As FIFA boss Gianni Infantino attempted to squirm out of the trap he’d set for himself this past week, his equally unloved predecessor had a go at him.
“Infantino, apparently a good Catholic, confesses his sins and then promises 25 million,” Sepp Blatter wrote on social media. “Confession, indulgence and absolution – all in a single performance appearance! The Pope is sure to be delighted.”
Blatter doesn’t get Twitter – if you want your online insults to land, they have to be far less literate. He may or may not get the more important thing – that Infantino has won.
It’s not that anyone likes him now that he’s said sorry for trying to secretly sell off the World Cup in chunks. It’s not that they believe that his new “working group” is going to get to the bottom of FIFA’s transparency problem. And it’s not that they don’t see what he’s doing by promising to dip into the cash reserves to buy off all 211 federations by giving each of them a US$25-million backhander. It’s that there’s no one else.
If anybody thought they could take Infantino on in March elections, they’d have made themselves known by now. The window to declare a candidacy closes in one month.
So far, Infantino’s only announced opponent is Ramon Vega, an unfamous former player. Vega has already tried to run for the FIFA presidency three other times, but couldn’t get the requisite five federations to back his play.
Rebel forces have grown so desperate that they’ve just started tossing out big names like Arsène Wenger and David Beckham. Why either of them would want the hassle isn’t clear.
At one point, CONCACAF’s Canadian boss, Victor Montagliani, was the hot pick to take on Infantino.
Montagliani isn’t a glamorous option. That’s the bulk of his appeal. FIFA’s primary power split divides Europe and everyone else. Europe has by far the loudest voice, but lacks the votes, as well as the sway. The defining characteristic of a contemporary FIFA boss is that he be an aristocratic European acting against Europe’s interests.
FIFA vice-president and CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani (standing), seen here at the FIFA Congress ahead of the 2026 World Cup, announced he will run again for CONCACAF presidency, removing himself as a potential replacement for Infantino.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Montagliani represents the neutral arbiter. Neither European nor American, but acceptable to both. Someone who can speak to other parts of the world without seeming to talk down to them. A middle-power man for the middle-power moment.
I’m sure Montagliani took a long look at the situation. After doing so, he decided to announce that he will run for CONCACAF leadership again. That takes him out of the running for Infantino’s job.
Montagliani is as much a creature of FIFA as the next ward boss. That he decided not to make a lunge to toward the top at this moment of great weakness tells you one thing – that Infantino still has the votes.
That makes all the rest of this pointless. Mocking Infantino’s excuses, his crush on Donald Trump and his suit-with-pristine-white-sneakers wardrobe are all great fun, but they aren’t adding up to much of a revolutionary movement.
Infantino has just proved something – if your ambition gets you in trouble, a total surrender of dignity might save you. It’s a very mid-21st century lesson.
Anyone with pride would have quit long ago. When your bosses catch you trying to sell the company they built out from under them to a friend of yours – that’s when you put your hand up and say, ‘You know what, fellas? You got me. How about my lawyers and your lawyers get together and write a nice statement about how I want to spend more time with my family, whoever they are. Then maybe you funnel me a cheeky 10 or 20 million, and we can part friends who hate each other.’
That’s how they did it for a long time. If you were able to worm your way inside it, it was a good system. But once visibility replaced reputation as the one percenters’ number-one reason to get out of bed in the morning, we switched to this unseemly way of doing things. No one can just leave. They all have to hang on like grim death.
It’s not like any of these people need the money. As it turns out, Infantino’s been dipping into the reptile fund to snag an extra couple of million this year.
The Times of London broke the initial World Cup selloff story, and it landed on soccer like a neutron bomb. The same paper broke the ‘second salary’ story last week and you would not have felt the shock wave had it hit you in the head.
The idea that Infantino is so crooked that he needs to be screwed into his pants is now baked in, which means nobody cares. He’s the shill, the hustler, the Iago minus the charm. Infantino’s cunning has been in accepting those roles.
Infantino, congratulating players at the Gulf Cup Final earlier this month, will face re-election for his presidency in March, 2027.Stringer/Reuters
He now gets that no one will ever rate him, or trust him, or agree to have their picture taken with him. His apologies at last week’s FIFA gathering were so half-hearted that they should have expired on the stage. He gets that there is no fixing the damage to his standing.
His old role was building FIFA into a nation-state-level political actor-slash-private-equity fever dream. His new role is to survive as long as possible through handouts.
What I wonder is would any of us choose this path? Would a regular person, having been gifted such enormous power and wealth, having decided they want even more, having then failed miserably, continue on in this cringing manner once they’d been caught and publicly humiliated?
I think probably not. I think most normal people would have taken the loss and moved on, hoping to hang on to whatever integrity they still had.
Better yet, they wouldn’t have pulled any of these shenanigans in the first place. They’d have been happy flying around on someone else’s tab, getting paid to watch sports for a living. This is why I like my friends like I like my coffee – regular.