I have it on good authority that one of the highlights of Gianni Infantino’s visit to the SMiSA stadium a couple of years back wasn’t the early screamer scored by Conor Barron for Aberdeen, nor the dramatic finale that saw St Mirren turn the match on its head in stoppage time. Oh no. It was, according to one witness, the kebab pie he was served at half time.
If only his conduct since his surprise appearance in Paisley had been as easy to swallow as that delightful combination of pastry, donner meat and kebab sauce (not to get sidetracked here, but while far from my favourite item on the modern Scottish football smorgasbord, it is better than it sounds).
At the time, hosting the most powerful man in world football was rightly trumpeted by the Buddies as something of a coup, but if Infantino was hankering for a second helping from the Pie Sports stall, it is highly unlikely that the Saints would be rolling out the red carpet once again. So toxic has his name become, it would be better PR with their fans if they laid on the VIP treatment for the nefarious (in the eyes of Saints supporters, anyway) James Grady.
Infantino’s approach to this World Cup has been nothing short of a disgrace. You could almost hold your nose and tolerate his toadying to Donald Trump as a political cost of hosting the tournament in his territory. But inventing and then awarding the US president the first FIFA Peace Prize was enough to give you the dry heave.
Even worse was his willingness to hide behind the lax laws around ticket reselling and dynamic pricing in the States to fleece fans, even operating an in-house scalping website to ensure FIFA took a cut from flogging briefs on to desperate punters for 10 or 20 times their original face value.
If all of that wasn’t hard enough to digest though, it has been his meddling with the integrity of the game itself that has finally proven too much to stomach.
Prior to the World Cup kicking off, you had the brazen reduction of what should have been a three-match suspension for Cristiano Ronaldo after he had been dismissed for an elbow on Republic of Ireland defender Dara O’Shea in a qualifying match last November. Had FIFA not intervened and so cynically circumvented its own regulations, Ronaldo would have missed Portugal’s opening two matches.
Can’t be having that, eh? McDonald’s had already printed his mug onto the side of their cups. In hindsight, given the 41-year-old arguably hindered his side with his laboured contributions more than he helped them, Roberto Martinez may be wishing they hadn’t bothered, but it was a clear and flagrant example of bending the rules to benefit a poster boy of FIFA’s tournament. Had it been Lyndon Dykes who had planted one on a Denmark defender, with the greatest of respect to the big man, I don’t think they would have been quite so flexible with the rulebook.
Events over the past week have taken the cake, though, with Infantino’s old mucker in the Oval Office picking up the phone to lean on his pal - in true mafioso style - and eventually succeeding in delaying the suspension that should have come the way of USA striker Folarin Balogun so that he could play against Belgium.
Whatever the apparent injustice felt by the US team over the red card shown to the Monaco forward, this intervention from a politician in the affairs of the game should have been given short shrift. Instead, it is now a case of can opened, worms everywhere, as England explore their own options to appeal the red card shown to Jarrell Quansah in their win over Mexico. Whether Sir Keir Starmer has sufficient cachet to swing that one with Infantino remains to be seen.
Incidentally, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in one of Gianni’s $1000-a-night hotel rooms when his denials of Trump’s sway on the ‘independent’ FIFA disciplinary committee were blown apart by the President himself, as he gleefully claimed credit for the suspended suspension in a triumphant press conference. As if he was ever going to be able to resist the urge.
By capitulating in such a manner to Trump, though, Infantino has not only destroyed whatever infinitesimal shred of credibility he still had as a man fit to lead the world’s most popular game, but he has sullied the world’s greatest tournament in the process. As well as, somehow, allowed former FIFA president Sepp Blatter to take the moral high ground, and criticise him for his lack of ethics. Which is a little like Steve Clarke having a pop at Paraguay for their lack of adventure.
Anyone who has read my previous despatches from my own trip to Miami to see Scotland take on Brazil over the past couple of weeks will know that I am, unashamedly, a hopeless romantic when it comes to the World Cup. But the more that Infantino meddles with the spirit of the tournament, and of football, the harder it is to keep the scales falling from even the mistiest of eyes.
The one thing that Infantino is yet to crush is the spirit of the fans themselves. For all that there was some trepidation about travelling to the States given the eye-watering cost and portrayals of the country on social media, what the Tartan Army found there was a wonderful, warm welcome, and the scenes of people from different countries coming together and having the time of their lives are exactly what makes the World Cup such a magical event.
Sadly, in time, those glorious opening weeks of the tournament will not be what this World Cup is remembered for. As well as being an avatar for FIFA’s exploitative, rapacious greed, it will be forever remembered for Trump standing behind the presidential seal and bragging of how he made a sport he barely understands bend to his will.
That will also be Infantino’s legacy. The damage done to the reputation of football, though, is far more important, and will be difficult to repair. For those of us who still cling on to the increasingly preposterous-sounding, noble virtues the World Cup was designed to embody, the whole spectacle has been sickening.
