By Mohamed Jaward Nyallay
Gianni Infantino is the new president of football’s world governing body, FIFA. Following a second round of voting in late February he won with 115 votes against Sheik Salman’s 88. The buildup to the election had been intense. However, the election is part of a broader process of reformation which FIFA has embarked on to clean its image. amid allegations of skullduggery.
FIFA is going through its worst corruption scandal in history and because of this very few will envy Infantino for his new job. All eyes will be on him to clean up the governing body of the beautiful game. Put simple, he should be more of cleaner than a leader of FIFA.
Coming in to the FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Infantino has already promised that he will implement the reforms the organization ratified on the eve of his election. This is necessary if FIFA should be seen as a credible organization once again.
Let’s meet Gianni
Gianni Infantino is a 45-year-old lawyer who was born in Brig, Switzerland. Brig is a village very close to former FIFA president, Sepp Blatter’s home village of Visp. One would pray that both men do not share attitudes coming so close to each other.
Gianni though has a dual nationality - Italy and Switzerland. The Swiss lawyer has walked his way systematically up the hierarchy of world football. He started working with UEFA [Union of European Football Association] in August 2000 and was appointed the Director of its Legal Affairs and Club Licensing Division in January 2004. He became Deputy General Secretary of UEFA in 2007 and Secretary General of UEFA in October 2009.
Infantino came to the spotlight for the FIFA job after his former boss, Michel Platini, got caught up in a web of corruption allegations surrounding FIFA. He was widely seen as an enthusiastic young man with a good experience to run the game. His communication skills are great - he speaks French, Italian and German fluently and also understands English, Arabic and Spanish.
Reform and the challenge
Before the election, FIFA member states voted overwhelmingly on a number of crucial reforms. Key among them is presidential term limit. This had been a major flaw in the running of the organization. This current president and all others after him will be allowed to run only for three terms. This will ensure that FIFA does not get another Blatter.
The organization has moved forward to disband the infamous Executive Committee (ExCo) and establish a bigger and more inclusive body known as the FIFA Council. This Council will comprise 36 members; six representatives from each confederation body and at least one of the six representatives should be a woman.
Salaries of top officials are going to be published for the sake of transparency and the 26 different subcommittees will be reduced to nine, for efficiency. A thorough cleaning of the house, one hopes.
But even with all these reforms, some are still not impressed. Musa Bility was among the first Football Association (FA) presidents to oppose the reform.
“These reforms send a very wrong signal…that we will have a president who will not have all the authority of the president of FIFA,” Billity was quoted as saying.
Bility is the president of the Liberian Football Association and he is regarded as one of the most vocal FA presidents in Africa.
Power is the main focus of this reform process; it aims at seriously cutting down the presidential power, to the extent the President will only be a ceremonial head.
Even at that, Consultant Jeffrey Thine said he does not see much hope. "The election is just reshuffling the deck. The house is polluted, and if you live in the house long enough you breathe the air,” said Thine, an anti-corruption, ethic and compliance consultant.
Looking at his point, he feels a genuine reform process should have been led by credible people from outside the organization. FIFA lost the right to reform itself a long time ago.
A huge number of people in the last administration are still in place and there is no way the reform could be credible if just the top bras were implicated.
UEFA has always wanted to control FIFA, they are addicted to it. FIFA have had eight presidents before Infantino and seven of them have been Europeans - Infantino being the latest. This addiction was one of the reasons why they were always at loggerheads with former president Blatter.
Infantino is one of their own, but he came in to this job at the wrong time to give UEFA the much special attention they will crave for. The whole world is watching him, whether he will really implement the reforms or go back on their commitment to clean themselves up as an organization.
He has to position himself in between keeping UEFA happy and attending to FIFA’s commitment.
"I want to be the president of all of you, of all 209 nations. I want to work with all of you to work together and build a new era where we can put football at the centre of the stage," Gianni Infantino said after he had been declared the winner.
For FIFA’s sake, everyone will hope that the president’s commitment is genuine and it is not a talk shop.
The war on the horizon
Infantino campaigned on issues like expanding the World Cup to 40 teams and redistributing FIFA’s wealth to its members for more capacity building. These messages look like an age-old campaign rhetoric used by most FIFA officials when running for office.
Well, here we are! He has won and now we are going to watch how this happens. His very first war is going to be with the European Clubs’ Association (ECA). ECA were among the very first bodies to congratulate him but they have always expressed their dissatisfaction with Infantino’s proposed plan for a 40-team world cup.
"We have reached a point where we cannot further burden the players, but need to relieve them. FIFA must fulfill this responsibility for the health of the players," says Karl- Heinze Rummeneigge, Chairman of ECA.
European clubs contributed 75% of the players at the last edition of the World Cup in Brazil and if they are not onboard this, then the war is on.
This is not the first time Infantino is leading a tournament expansion bid. He championed the expansion of the European Championship tournament from 16 teams to 24. This year’s Euros in France will be the first to involve 24 teams and Euro 2020 will be played across different cities across Europe.
Selling this whole expansion idea to his own European clubs will be extremely difficult. There will be a lot more wars to face in the future; when FIFA will demand that these transparency and accountability measures be replicated at confederation level.
Infantino is young, dynamic and a very focused man, everyone hopes that he puts some of these into his leadership. Already he has moved forward by announcing that the controversial 2018 and 2022 World Cup bids will not be reopened. This is understandable, because opening them will be like opening a Pandora’s Box.
Infantinno has the chance to etch his name in history. Decades after his tenure, whether he could be referred to as the man who fixed FIFA or the man who took them back to business-as-usual.
Well, for the sake of every football lover, everyone should wish Infantino success during his tenure in.
(C) Politico 09/03/16
