FIFA turns new leaf with Infantino
After much politicking and two rounds of voting in Zurich, Switzerland, the Swiss lawyer and sports administrator Gianni Infantino was elected last Friday as FIFA’s new president. The 45-year-old Infantino, who was most recently General Secretary of Europe’s football governing body UEFA, becomes only the third head of soccer’s global governing body since 1974. Infantino […]
After much politicking and two rounds of voting in Zurich, Switzerland, the Swiss lawyer and sports administrator Gianni Infantino was elected last Friday as FIFA’s new president. The 45-year-old Infantino, who was most recently General Secretary of Europe’s football governing body UEFA, becomes only the third head of soccer’s global governing body since 1974.
Infantino won the first round of voting with 88 votes to Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain’s 85. Prince Ali Bin Hussein of Jordan got 27 votes and Frenchman Jerome Champagne got seven votes. Infantino did not however secure the two-thirds majority needed to avoid a second round of balloting. In the second round, Infantino won with 115 votes to Sheikh Salman’s 88 votes. “We’re going to make sure that we can finally focus on the beautiful game of football,” Infantino said after his victory. “We will restore the image and the respect of FIFA”.
Infantino was widely seen as a more suitable candidate than his closest rival Sheikh Salman. Infantino has a clean record, although he is somewhat tainted by association with Michel Platini, who is currently serving a six-year suspension as UEFA president for receiving $2 million “disloyal payment” from former FIFA boss Sepp Blatter. Infantino also had the advantage of never having been on FIFA’s top table before while rivals like Sheikh Salman, Prince Ali and Jerome Champagne were all part of its leadership during its periods of scandal.
A package of sweeping reforms passed with 89 percent of the vote earlier on Friday renders the FIFA president’s office much less powerful than was under Blatter or his predecessor Joao Havelange. Those men wielded immense power and set the tone, direction and agenda for an entire sport by themselves. Now however, the president will be stripped of some of his functions and the once-mighty Executive Committee shall be diluted and renamed the FIFA Council.
Infantino will no longer have executive powers and would not get a tie-breaking vote on the Council as Blatter had on the Executive Committee. He will be limited to three four-year terms, compared to Havelange’s 24 years and Blatter’s 17 years at the top. Infantino’s first term completes Blatter’s, which began in May 2015, three days before he announced his resignation following a series of Swiss and FBI raids and Department of Justice indictments of his allies.
The Executive Committee will be replaced by the Council and increase from 24 members to 36 – mandating a minimum of six women, rather than one. The Council will no longer get to vote on World Cup hosts, a duty that will fall to the Congress, made up of all 209 member nations. Standing committees will be cut from 26 to nine and several layers of oversight and compliance mechanisms will be inserted into the structure. Crucially, the Council, unlike the Executive Committee, will no longer oversee business decisions which, along with the World Cup allocation, were the primary source of collusion and graft. That will be now handled by the new Secretary General and his administration.
Similarly, there will be greater scrutiny of council member elections. There will be universal good governing principles set for all confederations and member associations which will hopefully impact well on Nigeria’s rudderless football structure and administration. Furthermore, a New Football Stakeholder Committee will help ensure greater transparency and inclusion and minimize incessant rancor and in-fighting within national associations.
The real power in FIFA has been decentralized, fragmented and dispersed to a much larger group of people. Though the reform will not entirely stamp out corruption, we believe that it will go some way towards cleaning up FIFA’s famously dirty dealings. Finally, we hope that the new president will provide a new beginning for FIFA. A shift away from the total control that Blatter enjoyed during his 17-year reign appears to be a step in the right direction but making sure FIFA’s billions of dollars actually go to the growth of the game across the globe, not into the pockets of confederation leaders and their cronies, will be the challenge for Infantino if he wants to cleanse FIFA’s name and reputation.