As the world waits to see what punishment Fifa will dole out to the Argentinian players responsible for the disgraceful, incendiary unveiling of the “Falklands Islands are Argentinean” banner after Wednesday’s victory over England, small are the chances that justice will prevail.
If it were following its own example, Fifa would throw the full weight of its laws at the classless clowns who marred the World Cup semi-final in that way. After all, this is an organisation that only four years ago vowed to give Harry Kane a yellow card if he dared to so much as set foot on a World Cup pitch wearing a rainbow armband in solidarity with LGBT people.
If that was such an egregious breach of Fifa’s rules on political messages that it warranted an immediate booking, then any consistent, fair-minded and reasonable observer would conclude that the Argentineans deserve a far tougher penalty for their offensive and inflammatory provocation over a diplomatic dispute that was the subject of an actual war only a generation ago. A five-match suspension would be proportionate if you ask me.
Sadly, though, Fifa is neither consistent nor fair-minded. Football’s world governing body has instead become a byword for greed and corporate malfeasance, led by a president who was supposed to restore the organisation’s reputation.
Indeed, for all the drama, talent and sporting spectacle on the pitch, this World Cup has seen Fifa cement its reputation as a self-serving organisation responsible for shattering the relationship between the elite game and ordinary fans across the globe. Whether it was the extortionate ticket prices or the pathetically small number of seats allocated to loyal fans rather than corporate bosses, this tournament was the ultimate meeting of the beautiful game and the worst excesses of greedy, exploitative capitalism.
In the build-up to the tournament, many expected Donald Trump to impose himself on the competition and make it all about him. Instead, a bigger villain has emerged: the bald-headed figure of the Fifa president pictured gazing impenetrably out from his VIP seat at virtually every game.
Gianni Infantino, almost too perfect the stereotype of a Bond villain, has become the face of global football after another World Cup in which Fifa’s reputation has been marred further still.
First came the outrage over prices. Worse was to come. It will be some time before a sporting decision triggers such outrage as Fifa suspending its own rules to allow US forward Folarin Balogan to play in the last-16 game, despite having received a straight red card in the previous match. Under Fifa’s rules, that should have resulted in an automatic ban for two matches. But, after three reported phone calls between Trump and Infantino, those rules were suspended – with no explanation given.
Fifa insists the lobbying from Trump and his team had no impact on their decision, and Trump has said the same. But while we may never know what really happened during those discussions, this is exactly the appearance of ethical dubiousness that people have come to expect of Fifa under Infantino. After all, this is the man who dreamed up the absurdity of a Fifa Peace Prize just so he could award it to the US President in an act of pathetic, fawning sycophancy. Whatever the official line about the independence of Fifa’s disciplinary processes, the rest of the world rightly or wrongly has already drawn its own conclusions.
Infantino was supposed to transform his organisation’s reputation. He took over as president in 2016, months after the biggest scandal in Fifa’s history that saw Swiss police swoop on a luxury Zurich hotel at dawn to arrest seven Fifa executives on allegations of corruption. It was hard to see how the organisation’s standing could get any worse.
Whether it is the treatment of fans or the cosying up to corrupt leaders, supporters across the globe are sick of the perceived corruption blighting the elite game. They are not alone. Last year, a group of football experts from across the world declared that Fifa was even worse run than it was back in 2015 and was “structurally unfit to govern world football”. Or, as one of the whistleblowers whose testimony led to the corruption charges in 2015 put it in a recent interview: “Some cockroaches have scattered and other cockroaches came in, but the overall smell remains the same.”
So damaged is Fifa’s standing that conspiracy theories which would usually be dismissed as unhinged have been given an air of credibility: for example, the absurd claims that Fifa and Infantino have rigged this World Cup to try to ensure that Argentina win it. Even the Egyptian team manager, having watched his team lose 3-2 to Argentina after a series of dubious referring decisions, suggested that Fifa had somehow manipulated the result to “keep the world champions in the competition”. Usually such a claim would be dismissed as baseless, bitter nonsense. But, so debased is Fifa’s reputation after recent events that, even though there is no evidence for these claims, many fans have concluded it is the sort of thing that Fifa executives might conceivably try to do.
Infantino’s chequered history has only damaged Fifa further. When critics voiced concerns about the treatment of LGBT people and other minorities during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, for example, Infantino waved them away and tried to equate the experience of oppressed minorities to the bullying he received as a child for having freckles.
Earlier this year, as Russian missiles rained down on the homes of Ukrainian civilians and Putin’s war raged on, he argued again that a ban on Russia competing in Fifa competitions ought to be lifted. This coming from a man who was only too happy to travel to the Kremlin to accept a Russian Order of Friendship medal from Vladimir Putin back in 2019.
And then, of course, there was the awarding of the inaugural Fifa Peace Prize to Trump around the time he was threatening to go to war with a Nato ally by invading Greenland.
And so another World Cup has been overshadowed by the actions of Fifa’s executives – the greatest footballing spectacle on earth marred by the people who run it. Until Fifa elects a president serious about restoring integrity to the global game, nothing will change. We all look forward to the day that we can simply enjoy the football, free from scandals. I’m afraid it won’t be for a while yet.
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