There was a mixture of disbelief, anger and outrage back in December when United States president Donald Trump was presented with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize during the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC.
The increasingly authoritarian head of state was being heavily criticised by both human rights campaigners and the media at the time as a result of his administration’s stance on immigration as well as the actions of his country’s military.
Gianni Infantino, the president of world football’s governing body, was also accused of breaching strict rules on political neutrality and there were demands for his own ethics committee to carry out an investigation.
The row rumbled on for months and very much set the tone for the raft of high-profile controversies which arose at the tournament finals this summer.
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Yet, for Alan Tomkinson, an emeritus professor at the University of Brighton who has been writing about FIFA since the 1980s and is an expert on the organisation, another award which was handed out during the build-up to the World Cup was even more unsettling.
“Infantino was made a ‘Titan of Freedom’ by the Adam Smith Centre at Florida International University in Miami back in May,” he said yesterday during a chat about his new book What Is FIFA For?
“In Greek mythology, the Titans were a powerful generation of immortal deities who ruled the cosmos before the Olympian gods took power. For Infantino to accept an honour that names him the ‘Titan of Freedom’ borders on the lunatic for me.”
Many of those who are involved in running the beautiful game at the highest level around the globe would have agreed with that rather unflattering assessment of the polarising Swiss-Italian administrator long before that ceremony.
The 56-year-old’s behaviour has grown steadily more unpredictable, his statements more bizarre and his leadership style more autocratic during his 10 year tenure.
But his failed plan to create a commercial subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise, which external investors would be allowed to buy “minority, non-controlling” stakes in, to run their main events, including the World Cup, convinced more influential officials that he has lost the plot.
Several European associations – including those in England, Wales and the Republic of Ireland – have indicated they will not vote for Infantino at the FIFA presidential election in Rabat in Morocco in March next year even though no alternative candidate has to date announced they will run against him.
The SFA, whose president Mike Mulraney became the chairperson of the FIFA finance committee last October, have been savaged by some commentators in recent days for not following the lead of their counterparts even though they gave their “unequivocal” backing to a UEFA boycott of FIFA tournaments last month.
However, Professor Tomkinson has argued it is, due to the unstable nature of the figurehead, due to his Machiavellian tendencies, due to the considerable power which he continues to wield and due to the unthinkable but very real prospect of him surviving the latest scandal to blight his reign, the sensible move.
He believes that denouncing Infantino now could backfire spectacularly on them – as happened after their former president John McBeth called out Sepp Blatter for ignoring widespread corruption in 2007 - and end up costing Scottish football millions of pounds in payouts in future.
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“Infantino is trying to sound normal and give off the impression that everything is carrying on as before, that it is business as usual” he said. “But there have been veiled threats contained in some of the statements which FIFA have issued, threats to people who might be critical of them.
“Infantino has not looked like a particularly balanced leader lately. He's condemned journalists, academics, critics. He has gone on social media and accused them of ‘spreading hate’. For somebody in his position to use language like that is just extraordinary.
“He's naive because he doesn't always anticipate the impact of his actions. He's become a very remote figure. Nobody gets much chance to question him, not even his colleagues. Ultimately, he has shown he is a leader, who came in with a brief to reform FIFA and to help people, who is not trustworthy.
“No disrespect to them, but the SFA is one of the smaller associations in world football. The money they have received from FIFA has been very, very useful to them. So they have been faced with some very difficult decisions.
“These things are extremely political. If the SFA speak out against Infantino and he remains in power, as might well happen, then it could cost the SFA dear because I am fairly certain he has the capacity to act in a vengeful fashion.
“Money is everything to smaller associations. So it is a dilemma for them. I am sure they can see a future full of neglect if they fall foul of the man at the top. It is understandable they are thinking that way. They have got a lot to lose. It could seriously affect their continued development in the years to come.”
If a credible challenger does come forward in the coming months, Infantino will require 106 of the 211 member associations to vote for him next year to remain as FIFA president until 2031.
The AFC, CONCACAF and UEFA, who have 143 combined, all openly condemned FIFA Forward Enterprise and publicly voiced their unhappiness with the man who was behind the initiative. That would suggest his days are numbered.
But Professor Tomlinson said, “He could very well cling on. It's looking quite even at the moment. If it gets to a vote next March, it could go either way. These affairs have a tendency to sway one way and another.
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“But it is entirely possible that once individual associations come away from their confederations they will vote for the man in front of them. That could theoretically happen.
“His predecessor Sepp Blatter managed to remain FIFA president for a long time despite the heat he came under by distributing funding to smaller and poorer associations and ensuring they voted for him to remain.
“I was in the Congress Hall in Paris in 1998 when Blatter won the vote over Lennart Johansson, the rather charming Swede who was head the of UEFA at the time. He had told national associations they would be backed far more than they had previously been and that swung it for him.
“Many of them changed their public stance on Blatter at the last minute and voted for him as a result. He was very clever in a certain way. He established a model of clientelism and patronage. He was effectively saying, ‘Give me a vote and your money will go up’.
“Infantino has adopted his own version of the Blatter model. There are subtle differences. For example, he has turned his attention inwards more. He has silenced internal FIFA bodies in a quite remarkable way. He has radically reformed their structures two or three times to actually minimise the impact which his own committees can have.
“Another thing he has done is give more money to the other 36 members of the FIFA council that he sits on. They now personally receive really quite large sums of cash for effectively contributing very little. The amount varies, but they can receive up to €300,000 a year.
“I think that has been done so that they side with him. Dissenting voices have been silenced, open discussion has died. It has been like that for the last five or six years now. There is not the same transparency, debate or accountability that you normally get in such large institutions.
“Infantino is very crafty in other ways. Because he only served for 39 months during his first term, not the full four years, he engineered things so that stint could almost be wiped from his record and he could stand again. That goes against the FIFA statute. Presidents are only allowed to stand for three terms. He is already in a false position.
“Don’t get me wrong, what UEFA have done is immensely powerful and their position could very well help to force Infantino out. But if it does come down to a vote between all of the national associations it could easily go either way.”
Kevin Lamour, the chief operating officer at FIFA, broke ranks after FIFA Forward Enterprise was abandoned as a result of the international outcry that erupted.
He claimed that staff at world football’s governing body had been “deceived” about the contentious scheme.
Professor Tomlinson predicted that Infantino could be forced from office before the presidential election next year by his associates in Zurich and expressed hope there is much-needed change at the top.
“There is enough intolerance of Infantino, because of the levels of deception which we are now seeing, to force him out,” he said. “Somebody within FIFA may manage to persuade him to stand down before the vote. He has lost the respect of senior figures in his own institution. I certainly think it is time for him to go.”
