Gianni Infantino Is High On Power

In the end, it did not matter. They all had their reason to back and vote for Gianni Infantino, the supreme leader of the global game. Some simply wanted to belong to ‘the football family’, and others simply wanted the riches Zurich dispenses. The outcome was predictable: another Infantino solo – this time – in the Rwandan capital,

This was unvarnished Gianni Infantino, strolling alongside Paul Kagame on the stage, playing a legends game and taking in all the well wishes with an air of invincibility. In Kigali, Infantino didn’t feel gay, he didn’t feel Qatari. Instead, he felt loved. Infantino was just being, well, himself – a soccer official, proffering his expansionist vision of and future for the game. His repetitive claims of having reformed FIFA were received with polite applause, the kind of applause that betrays everyone is weighing up what is best for themselves, signifying betrays that they will tolerate him as long as he benefits their interest.

A FIFA Congress is just that – a spectacle where everyone rallies behind the leader in an endless tit-for-tat. Who gets the hosting rights to the 2030 World Cup? Will Saudi Arabia get 2034? How much money is Zurich distributing in the next cycle? It’s scheming, pork barrel tactics and double deals, all behind the facade of a stage-managed Infantino coronation. There were legends, power brokers, minor officials on a day out, consultants, hangers-on, and Lise Klaveness, a heavyweight FA president with all the right credentials and values, and thus an alien in an all wine-and-dine male milieu. She is hardly welcome.

Infantino doesn’t do dissent. Neither did host Kagame, the latest authoritarian head of state to embrace the global game in an elaborate exercise of reputation laundering. Infantino never foregoes an opportunity of a photo opp. Next to Pele’s coffin? Done. With an autocrat of choice? Love it. Understandably, Infantino and Kagame are friends: they share a frighteningly similar world vision, one that excludes human rights, freedom of the press, and democracy.

Translated to Infantino’s world: running unopposed, living a luxury lifestyle in Doha – or is it Zug as Ekstrabladet and Idrettspolitikk reported – and fostering a hostile atmosphere toward journalists across the board. The FIFA president didn’t grant a single interview during the World Cup. In Kigali, he lashed out again against the press corps. He incensed some members of the audience after he drew a direct comparison between the Rwandan genocide and his presidential victory in 2016, a comparison he then slyly denied he had made.

Soccer could be stuck for a long time with Infantino. By his own calculations – and now backed by the FIFA Council, Infantino could stay on until 2031. Kagame thinks he can do better – 2034. Infantino enjoyed – or endured – global headlines following his freakish, raging-against-the-world speech on the eve of the last years’ World Cup. Barney Rooney from The Guardian likened Infantino to `Football Jesus’. Behold for He walks among us.’ Jesus on white sneakers, though.

Henry Winter from the Times of London referred to King Lear’s speech, but it was at that moment that a global audience got to understand who soccer’s supremo is – not an indented laborer, not a homosexual, not an African, not even a Qatari, but a technocrat who became a power junky who has turned FIFA into a death star, a larger-life-than organization well beyond a commercial entity, a geopolitical player of its own that cannot be held accountable.

His Doha speech was one of faux concern, deflection and Qatari PR arguments, but, above all, he pitched to his constituency, singling out the West as hardened racists. It was brilliantly insidious, prompting an insider to draw a comparison with both Sepp Blatter and Donald Trump. Blatter always sided with the rest of the world, Trump ranted off the cuff. Infantino then is a sign of the times, an unhinged leader of a sport out of control.