The details should trouble anyone who cares about how football is governed.
FIFA has presented the proposal as part of the “democratisation of football worldwide”. UEFA sees things rather differently: “None of us are the owners of football. It is not FIFA’s to sell,” UEFA said.
The UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, said pretty much the same thing, adding: “Football belongs to the fans. It always has, and it always will.”
There are also serious questions about the relationships surrounding the proposal. Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital has been linked to the plan. Kushner is the brother of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. This comes after a World Cup during which Infantino’s proximity to the US president became increasingly conspicuous – to the point where Trump publicly acknowledged asking him to review refereeing decisions.
Infantino has now also been called to appear before the US Congress amid questions over FIFA’s relationship with Trump.
None of this establishes wrongdoing. But an organisation governing the world’s most popular sport should understand that such relationships require extraordinary transparency. Instead, Infantino presides over a FIFA in which power has become dangerously concentrated.
Infantino’s power is not simply personal but structural. FIFA’s patronage system turns development money into political loyalty, political loyalty into presidential power, and presidential power into an institution increasingly resistant to meaningful scrutiny.
Decisions of extraordinary consequence are now seemingly made with vanishingly little consultation or accountability: not good governance so much as rule by presidential fiat.
