By James Dostoyevsky
The last few weeks have been bad ones for the new FIFA President. No matter what he does, whether boarding easyjet or a private jet, someone always has a quarrel with his choice.
When he talks about reforms, his words are twisted right away and make him look like a reform-killer. If he attempts to clean house, people hasten to call him dictatorial and worse.
Is this really the decent approach? After all, he even sought Papal consent and benediction for his journey at the top of Mount FIFA: Mum and family included. So, come on world! Cut him some slack! (As for how he got to Rome, the tail numbers tell every tale).
It is bad enough to be unexpectedly elected to the very office that he had fought tooth and nail against for well over a decade: His Master’s Voice at UEFA demanded the battle with FIFA, and as a good soldier and employee, he always complied. Because that’s what he is, isn’t it? A good soldier and a good employee thrust into a leadership role he probably never wanted.
And now?
Now he finds himself installed on that very throne that UEFA – he – wanted to eliminate. He has been elected to lead the enemy that he fought for so long. Some conflict! Come on, world, how can that be easy?
Why blame the man whose main claim to TV fame was to pick balls out of a tumbler and announce pairings for the Champions League? Why blame him now, when, for the first time, he can actually see the low-hanging fruits of a promised land on the top shelf, whereas he was previously – only months ago! – damned to reach for the lower shelves all of his former life as UEFA’s solid soldier?
The top shelf at FIFA – and nothing seems to have changed there – has lots of goodies on offer: private flights to Mexico (where First Class was the original option), access to Kings and Queens, the Pope and Putin, whilst before he met but Swiss dignitaries who nobody knows, and who really don’t matter. Not to mention the spoils of an Office that was horribly demystified one morning in May 2015, but one that still holds the promise of ‘grandeur’ and the fiction of ‘I am somebody to reckon with’.
Infantino’s sudden access to the top echelons of footballing power (a power that so excites the US who until now struggled to understand football as a geo-political machine) would perturb many a decent man. And so it did. Him too.
Seated in his old supporter’s chair, and overlooking the pitch to his right and the grand FIFA entrance behind him and to his left, Mr Infantino must have sunk deep into its upholstered comfort and exclaimed yet another incredulous “uff”, perhaps solemnly shedding that one little tear that said “you have indeed arrived”.
These are the kind of beautiful and solemn moments in a man’s lifetime.
Instead, he is under siege for:
- having seen to Scala’s fall (did Scala not get a little too big for his boots?),
- for appointing a fine person to run the show (but neglecting to highlight the fact that she doesn’t have a clue about football),
- to have, ok, taken a jet flight or two that was perhaps not totally necessary (instead of acknowledging how stressful it is to get from Milan to Rome to Moscow to Qatar),
- to have sacked a man called Kattner who co-signed each and every contract that Valcke was fired for,
- to have offered a peace pipe to the man who actually wrote the very contracts that two others were actually fired for (?!),
- to have hired people close to him instead of exchanging as much as a quiet word with those who kept FIFA alive: the 450+ employees who don’t know whether they are coming or going? (Many have been leaving and still more will).
We have to try to be fair with Mr Infantino: he’s trying. He doesn’t appear to be succeeding, but he’s trying. His communications are done by American professionals (who have little understanding of European affairs), his lawyers are not his lawyers but lawyers of a foreign over-lawyered land, and his people are not his people but the people he fought against for over a decade.
How difficult is that, I ask you. It is nigh superhuman to get to grips with all that.
So, should he be left alone to fix FIFA, as he seems to be requiring? He’s brand new in the chair that has more semblance to a catapult than an ergonomic workplace from which to plan FIFA’s move to a better place. Should we let him tug along with his reforms (?), his leadership skills (?) and his general good manners (??).
He will make ‘it’, there can be no doubt. But it all depends on how one defines ‘it’.
Bill Clinton comes to mind when, under rough questioning, the eternal lawyer (that Mr Infantino is as well) responded to a question by saying: “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is”. Admitted, he didn’t get too many brownie points with that comment (with a soiled blue dress before him in evidence), but Mr Infantino will be definitely able to define what the meaning of ‘it’ is. Just watch!
James Dostoyevsky is a Washington-based commentator on politics and sports. He can be contacted at moc.l1714300845labto1714300845ofdlr1714300845owedi1714300845sni@o1714300845fni1714300845