FIFA needs to start behaving like fans and players matter or else it’ll have nothing left to sell - Andy Brown
There are plenty of people who think that football is a matter of life and death. The former Liverpool Manager Bill Shankly once claimed it was more important than that. Clearly it isn’t.
It is, however, a very important part of the lives of many of us and very big business. How it is run and the character of the people who manage and control the clubs and the organisational structure matters.
It matters when a club with a proud tradition that is supported by thousands of loyal fans is taken over by someone with more money than talent who manages it into financial administration. Ask supporters of Sheffield Wednesday about that one.
It matters when a couple of cynical business operators acquire massive debts in order to buy a club and are then allowed to load those debts onto the club they have bought, leverage every asset the club owns and then sell off some of what’s left at a massive profit to someone else that most fans don’t trust. Ask a Manchester United fan.
It also matters when an entire sport is publicly shamed when the man who is supposed to be its most senior public voice chooses to invent a peace prize and give it to Donald Trump in a deliberate political gesture that ignores the wishes of most member organisations.
That is a squalid mixing of sport and politics. Not done because FIFA was standing up for some important principle that transcended sport and might have justified dragging it into the political arena. It was the result of a deliberate choice from a man who is meant to represent our sport to try and ingratiate himself with a very particular set of politicians for personal gain.
What the intended gain was became clear as soon as the football in the World Cup was over and done with. Whilst that peace prize was being handed out links were being forged with Trump’s inner circle that created opportunities to monetise the sport of football.
It is, of course, theoretically possible that the wish to discover just how much money could be squeezed out of anyone wanting to watch sport on TV or in person was driven by a desire to fund grass roots football and transfer money from wealthy westerners to poverty stricken players in more disadvantaged parts of the world.
Anyone who believes that is staggeringly naïve. If large quantities of extra money were suddenly to be swishing about under the control of a small group of FIFA officials the regulation of where that money ends up is likely to be rather less than squeaky clean.
More money might indeed end up in the hands of those who voted Infantino into office. The suspicion of many of us, whether justified or not, is that large quantities of it would end up in obscure crypto accounts where neither the tax authorities nor the courts would ever be able to track it down.
There is much more likelihood of money ending up with those who already have money and power than of it reaching a small club in the Third World or helping the career of some talented youngster with no money or connections.
In such circumstances it is hugely to the credit of UEFA and of other regional football authorities that they have stood up and objected to a set of decisions that were made with no openness, no due process and no genuine morality.
We now face such a dramatic split in world football that it is entirely possible there will be two different world cups in 2030. One in Spain and Portugal run by those who agree with UEFA and another in Morocco run by those who think Infantino will keep them supplied with cash.
That can only be bad for the sport. Boxing suffered enormously when it split into multiple competing organisations each of them claiming to be running the world championship. Golf hasn’t exactly prospered as a result of the LIV tour fiasco.
Yet it would be a lot better to split and at least try to have one honestly managed competition where red cards can’t be overturned for political favours than to allow football to remain in the hands of those who have already demonstrated the flaws in their judgement and their character.
It is to be hoped that FIFA will realise before it is too late that they will have nothing worth selling unless they start behaving like fans and players matter. The sport’s administration needs to be cleansed of those who have allowed Infantino’s clique to accumulate power, wealth and arrogance on the back of ordinary fans. On the evidence of past practice I wouldn’t advise anyone to hold their breath on that one.
Meanwhile in the real football world my season of supporting Second Division Crewe Alexandra began again as we managed to squeeze past Accrington Stanley in the Carabao Cup in the first real game of our season. Such things matter to a grassroots fan.
Supporting the same club for 60 years comes with its pain but it also comes with its pleasures. Watching the machinations of some of the leaders of world football is all pain.
Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley.