The international football federation’s chief Gianni Infantino quickly scrapped a $20 billion deal to sell a 20 per cent stake in the sport’s blue riband World Cups to a consortium of private investors headed by Joshua Kushner, the brother of the US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The radical proposal was likened to selling the soul of the game as the super ambitious Swiss-Italian Fifa president sought not only personal glory but also a route to a $65 million a year salary like the US’s NFL commissioner draws besides access to private jets. This was a personal aggrandisement scheme right up the alley of the deal-making enterprises associated with the White House occupant and his immediate kin.
The proposal received such a fierce pushback as to force the Italian administrator to beat a hasty retreat but so stung were the European associations, which are leading members of Fifa and Uefa, that they are calling for his head now. His idea was too radical but the need for additional funds for football-playing national associations to nurture and promote the game is undeniable. And yet private enterprise was never a part of Fifa’s fund-raising efforts.
Mr Infantino’s cavorting with Mr Trump had not gone down universally well with heavy criticism directed at the Fifa peace prize, which was born of the sycophantic football chief’s imagination. The federation bowing to Mr Trump’s diktat to cancel the red card and subsequent suspension of the US striker Folarin Balogun was another event which showed Mr Infantino in poor light.
The fact is football, the universally popular sport in which 211 nations participate and compete for 48 places in the globally glamorous World Cup, has all the power to attract finances on its own. The US World Cup is said to have gathered a revenue of $15 bn as global commercial interests line up to sponsor and advertise in the ‘beautiful’ game. There was little need for such a senior administrator to try and lead them on a garden path to tainted riches.
The proposal to oust him as Fifa’s head was dubbed “kill the monster,” which perfectly sums up how hurt the true lovers of the game felt. Interesting times are ahead as Mr Infantino battles to save his elected seat and his legacy in an expanding World Cup, the latest edition of which was a success despite all the politics that was injected into it by Mr Trump’s USA.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: deccanchronicle.com
