You may be right but there is no transparency. We do not know either way. It is always possible to judge people by the company they keep and Infantino seems to be close to a very corrupt American President. Anyway, who knows!
Keeping the company of world leaders, especially those whose countries are hosting FIFA events, comes with the job.
Unfortunately, as many world leaders and global organisations have found, Trump is wildly erratic and it can often take extreme flattery to get him onside…at least for a little while. Of course, awarding him a peace prize was grotesque but, if they hadn’t done that, FIFA would have had to come up with something else to butter him up, especially given the administration’s immigration policies and their approach to enforcement.
Yes, the Somali ref fell foul and the Iran national team had to put up with restrictions, but things could easily have been much worse but for FIFA’s influence. For example, FIFA pushed hard to allow Iran to participate at all - which was a big concession from an administration that’s not only clamped down on who can enter the country at the best of times, but was actually at war with Iran!
Coincidentally, there is an article on the Independent website by Miguel Delaney talking about the issues surrounding FIFA.
Yes he’s good. Like I said, there’s no shortage of question marks over Infantino and his leadership, and very valid question marks, but FIFA is still sometimes too easy a target. Arguably much of that’s of their own making anyway - e.g. by the lack of transparency, as you mentioned - but dismissing it all as corruption just clouds things unnecessarily.
Anyway, looking forward to seeing Harry, Jude and Donald parading the trophy on Sunday!
