Gianni Infantino wins majority in second round of voting in Zurich after surprise result in first ballot. To
welcome Gianni Infantino’s election victory you would need to ignore Sepp
Blatter’s instant endorsement of the new Fifa president (" he has all the
qualities to continue my work,” said Blatter),
forget who voted him in, cast aside the backdrop of institutionalised corruption and believe that the reform package passed in Zurich is for real.
forget who voted him in, cast aside the backdrop of institutionalised corruption and believe that the reform package passed in Zurich is for real.
You would need to overlook, too, the fact that
Infantino ran on a ticket of expanding the World Cup to 40 teams and doubling
payments from Fifa coffers to national associations: tasty pieces of bait to
delegates who might have been tempted to risk the PR disaster of a Sheikh
Salman presidency.
There is more. To consider this a new dawn from an
organisation that has displayed many of the characteristics of an organised
crime syndicate football fans would need to forgive Infantino for not
distancing himself from Blatter and Michel Platini, his boss at Uefa, in the
run–up to the vote.
In London, Infantino told the media: “I respect
very much all the work he [Blatter] did in terms of football development, in
particular around the world.” No prizes for spotting that much of the work Fifa
did in “football development” ended with money going missing; for starters, the
$10m South Africa supposedly paid to help the grass-roots game in the Caribbean
– Jack Warner’s manor.
So Infantino’s platitudinous promise to “win back
respect” for the pseudo parliament who awarded the 2018 World Cup to Russia and
the 2022 tournament to Qatar is going to require a lot of supporting evidence
to stop us thinking he was simply Uefa’s anti-everybody-else candidate, rushed
up the line after Platini was banned for accepting a “disloyal payment” from
Blatter.
Infantino’s election as president was stage two in
a manic survival exercise by delegates, who were eager to find a winner who
might stop the world despising them. The more important stage one was the
passing of reforms that many veteran Fifa-watchers expect to be watered down
when the old cliques recover their composure
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