Is the sport of football heading in the right direction now that the Swiss-Italian Gianni Infantino has been elected Fifa president
Is the sport of football heading in the right direction now that the Swiss-Italian Gianni Infantino has been elected Fifa president The fear that Fifa may have chosen once again from its own kind of sports administrators who brought such disrepute to football cannot be brushed aside. As interim head, the polyglot who knows the same five languages as the displaced Sepp Blatter and who was Michel Platini’s aide at UEFA for 15 years, seven years as general secretary, was able to take the federation away from the eye of the storm over the scandals. But, as he threw his hat in the ring just before the deadline, he may have had to offer the same blandishments candidates have been known to use to get elected in a world seeped in corruption. In his campaign, Infantino offered several incentives to voting countries, including $1 million every four years for administrators’ travel.
On the face of it, though, Infantino seems a far more suitable candidate to take the federation forward than Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa who, coming from an autocratic Bahrain family accused of human rights violations, is of a not so democratic mould. It is possible to see more than a glimmer of hope in a football technocrat steeped in the knowledge and experience of sports administration taking over. To steer Fifa away from its power politics and give the game and its development primacy are priorities the new office-bearers must embrace if the federation is to get over the Blatter-Platini era. The “beautiful game” has had the reform process thrust upon it, but that is the norm these days in all sports federations.
