By Andrew Warshaw
June 2 – It has been another uncomfortable day for FIFA president Gianni Infantino in the wake of another verbal onslaught by veteran predecessor Sepp Blatter who resigned from the world governing body exactly five years ago.
Having been informed in April that Swiss justice investigators wanted to close one of two cases against him, Blatter today received official notification that the investigation into the controversial contract signed in 2005 with the Caribbean Football Union (CFU) that saw TV rights passed on to disgraced FIFA vice president Jack Warner had indeed now been terminated.
It is an embarrassing moment for Infantino who, on first learning that the Swiss wanted to close the case, filed a request to continue it in May. But according to Le Monde the decision to wind up proceedings was taken by the Public Ministry of the Swiss Confederation (MPC), based on a classification order dated May 22, not long after Infantino had filed his own continuance request.
That now leaves just one case open against Blatter in the Swiss justice system and that looks to be on increasingly shaky ground. It concerns the case of whether the infamous CHF2 million payment to Michel Platini in 2011 was a ‘disloyal payment’. Platini has already been cleared by the Swiss justice authorities of any wrongdoing as regards the payment though both men, of course, served a lengthy Fifa ban for the same offence.
As if on cue five years after being forced to step down at the start of the FifaGate scandal, and in what is becoming a regular occurrence as he surveys the state of the organisation he left behind, Blatter took another swipe at Infantino, this time accusing him of being far too full of himself and turning FIFA into “a huge money machine”.
Speaking to the Swiss agency Keystone-SDA, he claimed Infantino was a megalomaniac who was only in it for himself.
Blatter has not been indicted by the US justice department unlike many of his former powerbroker colleagues but is still serving a six-year ban for that infamous “disloyal payment” debacle.
“It seemed that Gianni Infantino wanted to pave the way for the presidency,” Blatter said, adding that Infantino “went into megalomania”.
“In his arrogance he no longer talks to association presidents, but only to heads of state.”
Criticising what he claimed were Infantino’s expansion plans for football, Blatter added: “He wants to turn football into a huge money machine. He wants everything to be bigger.”
“A World Cup of 48 teams, the Goal project renamed because he wants three times more money. A big Club World Cup with 24 teams, taking the Women’s World Cup from 24 to 32 teams. It’s not possible, it’s too heavy to digest.”
Blatter also accuses American authorities of switching tack during their corruption investigation once he had been forced to step down.
“They said, ‘The head must go. I give up my mandate (but) then suddenly FIFA no longer is a mafia organization to US prosecutors, rather the victim’.”
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1713291965labto1713291965ofdlr1713291965owedi1713291965sni@w1713291965ahsra1713291965w.wer1713291965dna1713291965. Additional reporting by moc.l1713291965labto1713291965ofdlr1713291965owedi1713291965sni@n1713291965osloh1713291965cin.l1713291965uap1713291965.