FIFA may have elected a new president, but not much else is likely to change

At last, Sepp Blatter is gone. World football’s governing body Fédération Internationale de Football Association elected its new president last Friday. Enter former general secretary of the Union of European Football Associations, Gianni Infantino. It's an inside job and an inside appointment if there ever was one. His first few days in office have reeked of the familial and the facile: he reassured both Qatar and Russia that they will host the next two World Cups and drummed the beat for a World Cup with 40 teams. Is the Swiss-Italian a statesman who wants to clean up the beautiful game, or is he simply the next con-artist in a long line of unsavoury football administrators?

Messengers of the old regime

Last Friday, a protester held up a placard outside Zurich’s Hallenstadion with the words: “Make FIFA great again. Vote Trump”. It was both a witty indictment of FIFA and a reflection of the institutional crisis the organisation is going through.

FIFA’s great empire began to collapse on a cold December afternoon in 2010, when Blatter and his FIFA Executive Committee awarded the 2022 World Cup to tiny, gas-rich Qatar. That cataclysmic moment allowed FIFA’s bubble to be pierced slowly but surely, culminating in arrests and indictments by the US’ Federal Bureau of Investigation and Swiss authorities last year.

Friday’s extraordinary FIFA Congress convened to pass a reform package and elect a successor to Blatter, but there was little to suggest that the organisation actually desires wholesale change. The organisation needs to change and achieve a perception in line with that goal. Last week, FIFA did not seem determined to metamorphose from a corrupt and patronage-driven fiefdom into a more credible sports body. There was neither an attempt at total housecleaning nor an endeavour to craft a roadmap for true reform.

Before the morning was out in Zurich, a diatribe of buzzwords had filled the Congress hall – transparency, responsibility, good governance, and leadership. The organisation’s global membership approved a set of new reforms, including a term limit of 12 years for the FIFA president, stricter integrity checks, more female representation, a FIFA Council instead of the all-powerful FIFA Executive Committee, an audit of the 209 national federations’ finances, and disclosure of the FIFA president’s compensation.

No real reform

It neatly projects the image of reform FIFA so desires, but too many questions remain. FIFA officials have decided not to re-examine some highly controversial decisions and contracts, notably awarding the 2018 and 2022 World Cup to Russia and Qatar respectively and doling out media and hospitality rights without a transparent bidding process. The perks for the many members sitting on the hodgepodge of FIFA committees and task forces were left untouched. At the level of the national federations, there is little desire for root-and-branch reform either.

Neither is this desire evident at the top. In the afternoon, the five presidential candidates – all long-standing members of the footballing establishment – delivered brief pitches.

The five men who would be king all lacked credibility. They employed traditional pork barrel tactics to further their own campaigns, promising an expanded World Cup and a big gravy train from development funds for the national federations.

‘A culture of transparency’

In reality, the election was a two-horse race between Infantino and Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa from Bahrain. Both are apparatchiks who vaguely supported reforms. The 45-year-old Swiss, who comes from Brig, the village next to Blatter’s birthplace of Visp, promised to turn FIFA into a “modern well-governed institution,” while Sheikh Salman pledged “a culture of transparency.”

Salman was the frontrunner. The All India Football Federation supported him, as did both the Asian Football Confederation and the African Football Confederation. But persisting accusations of human rights violations and his role in suppressing a pro-democracy movement in Bahrain in 2011 cast a shadow over his campaign.

“We will restore the image of FIFA, and everyone in the world will applaud us, and all of you, for what we do in FIFA in the future,” said Infantino said in his acceptance speech.

FIFA reforming itself is hogwash. Infantino, as the organisation’s new frontman, is simply an exponent of a non-election. His promise of $5 million to each of FIFA’s 209 members was a key feature of his campaign. It is an old trick of the FIFA trade, which underpins that Infantino is not the reformer he claims to be.

Nothing really changes

It demands naivety to welcome Infantino as football’s new leader: the same old legion of dubious football officials voted him in, Blatter immediately endorsed his successor, his connection with much-maligned former UEFA president Michel Platini remains, and so does the backdrop of institutionalised corruption.

“The money of FIFA is your money, it’s not the money of the FIFA president,” said Infantino in a finger-jabbing gesture during his final pitch. It was a “Blatteresque” tactic, but enough to convince smaller national federations to vote for him.

Blatter himself is endeared by Infantino. “He has all the qualities to continue my work,” said the septuagenarian. At no point has Infantino distanced himself from his predecessor. Before the election, Infantino had said: “I respect very much all the work he [Blatter] did in terms of football development, in particular around the world.”

Infantino also circled around Michel Platini for many years. He can neither have been blind nor indifferent to the Frenchman’s chicanery and deceit. Infantino was rushed up as UEFA’s candidate for the FIFA elections after Platini was banned from the global game for accepting a “disloyal payment” from Blatter.

FIFA gave football a reform package and a new figurehead, but Infantino is up against a system of horse-trading, patronage, pork-barrel politics and double deals that served and defined football officialdom in the past four decades. He will not sweep it away and he may not want to either. The onus is now on Infantino to prove that he will lead FIFA differently. Only then will his election have truly heralded a new start for the global game.