FairSquare director Nick McGeehan offers reflections on the increasing interdependence of authoritarian leaders and sports bodies, FIFA in particular, which should be sounding alarm bells around the world. A version of this article was published in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten on 29 January.
There was a lot to take in at last week’s inauguration of US President Donald Trump, not least the presence and unbridled delight of FIFA President, Gianni Infantino. Seated only a few rows behind Trump during his inaugural address, Infantino laughed a little too hard when the president mentioned his plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, looking all the world like a man still giddy from being namechecked by Trump in his speech the evening previously. Had anyone missed that, FIFA put out a lengthy press release, and Infantino gleefully recounted the incident on Instagram, while throwing FIFA’s full weight behind Trump, who hopes to bask in the glow of the US’s hosting of this year’s FIFA Club World Cup and the 2026 men’s World Cup. “Together we will make not only America great again but also the entire world”, said Infantino to his 2.3 million followers.
It can be easy to dismiss Infantino’s antics, but authoritarians like Trump take him very seriously, or at least they take the powers that the FIFA Presidency confers very seriously. And the fact that they do should be setting off alarm bells.
Infantino was swept to power in the aftermath of a series of corruption scandals that finally removed Sepp Blatter from the FIFA presidency after 17 years. “We will restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA. And everyone in the world will applaud us,” Infantino told FIFA delegates in 2016 upon assuming the presidency. The truth is, he hasn’t changed a thing for the better, and the ease with which the world’s strongmen have drawn him into their sphere of influence is transforming FIFA from simply a corrupt organisation into a profoundly dangerous one.
In our recent report, Substitute: the case for the external reform of FIFA, FairSquare argued that FIFA was unfit to govern world football and described how its operations either caused or exacerbated a wide range of social harms and human rights abuses. But Infantino’s fawning performance in Washington DC lays bare a more sobering truth: at this exceptionally dangerous moment in history, FIFA is fast becoming a handmaiden to the authoritarians reshaping a bleak new world order. As progressives around the world look for ways and means to push back and reassert values of internationalism and solidarity, and the rule of international law, they would do well to not cede the cultural and political power of football to the likes of Trump.
It is not just football, of course. In a recent comment piece, Jules Boykoff describes the political potency of sport as an “ever-bubbling cauldron of connection on full boil” and rightly derides the failure of progressives to treat sport seriously -“It is past time to ditch the bugaboo that sports don’t matter, or worse, that they are some spurious diversion from reality, a nefarious opioid that dulls our collective political vim.”
Globally, no sport matters more than football, and leaving its political and cultural power potential in the hands of an organisation like FIFA is wildly irresponsible. FIFA will not and cannot fix itself because it is structurally resistant to internal reform. Its senior officials and a critical mass of its member associations are locked into a mutually dependent system of patronage, whereby billions of dollars of FIFA’s development money is redistributed in such a way as to encourage the member associations’ political support for the President. This system makes effective self-regulation impossible, it explains why the much-vaunted reform process that swept Infantino to power in 2016 has been a failure, and it is at the root cause of decisions like the one that led to FIFA subverting its new bidding guideline at the end of last year to ensure that Saudi Arabia was the sole candidate for the 2034 men’s World Cup. Trump offers Infantino political support for FIFA’s commercial ambitions, but it is Trump’s “very good friend” the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, who is putting serious money directly into FIFA’s coffers.
As reported by Tariq Panja, Saudi money is behind the commercially inexplicable 1 billion dollar broadcast deal for the inaugural FIFA Club World Cup announced in December which rescued Gianni Infantino’s pet project from financial failure. In addition to the revenue that FIFA will generate from the 2034 men’s World Cup, Saudi state oil giant Aramco is now FIFA’s most lucrative sponsor, providing FIFA with an estimated 100 million dollars annually. The damaging cost of FIFA’s misgovernance will continue to mount, both on and off the pitch, as the organisation is drawn further into the sphere of influence of the autocrats who feed off the conceit, megalomania and greed that are the defining characteristics of the men who run world football. FIFA will sprinkle World Cup fairy-dust all over Trump’s fascist vision for America, while at the same time helping Saudi Arabia to keep the developing world hooked on its oil, accelerating climate change.
If we want to harness the power of football for good and draw it away from the sphere of influence of populist strongmen and dictators, there is a lot of work to be done but also cause for cautious optimism. In the course of our research on FIFA it was strikingly apparent how many smart, talented and committed people are involved in trying to ensure the game delivers on its huge transformative potential. Lise Klaveness, the president of the Norwegian Football Federation is the most high-profile example of a football insider who steadfastly refuses to go with the corrupt FIFA flow, but there are many others working assiduously behind the scenes. The problem is that their efforts are continuously undermined by a system that rewards graft and self-enrichment and disincentives ethical conduct, but there is no reason to leave this system untouched and we have the legal tools at our disposal to challenge FIFA’s power structure.
As FairSquare outlined in a recent policy brief, Laws for the Game, co-authored by Dr Jan Zglinski from the London School of Economics, the European Union offers the most obvious solution. The EU has the competences to regulate FIFA (and sports governing bodies more generally), its laws are binding and can be drafted in a way as to have an external effect beyond Europe’s borders, and, as a political union of 27 states, it is far less susceptible to political pressure from FIFA. There are various ways in which a dedicated EU law on sport could impose the type of effective governance that is conspicuous by its absence at FIFA.
Imposing external reform on FIFA will be a huge challenging task, but as well as being good for the game it is increasingly critical for the defence of democracy.
