This is the end.
The proposed plan to sell off a section of FIFA to a group of investors led by Donald Trump’s son-in-law is the end of the credibility of Gianni Infantino’s FIFA.
How can we take such an organization seriously?
Remember the Folarin Balogun red card scandal where Donald Trump phoned up Gianni to get the one game suspension overturned. How does that decision seem to you, now you know there was a proposed ten-billion-dollars deal between the two men?
Remember that the father of this infamous group was criminally convicted of financial fraud and witness tampering. Donald Trump pardoned him and made him US Ambassador to France.
Not I am not joking. This is the family who will now hold a significant financial part of the world’s “Beautiful Game”.
How can we ever take such an organization seriously again?
**
It was a schooling.
A late-night discussion in the back of a Singaporean bar with the wonderful journalist Jeffrey Low. He said,
“You are obsessed with these match-fixers. Don’t you understand those people are the chicken-feed criminals. They fix a few games, pay off a few players, make some money on the betting market. Big deal. The real criminals. The ones with the fingers in every pie are above them: they are the politicians, the Ministers and Princes in Malaysia, the super-rich business guys here. They control everything. Forget your crusade against match-fixing and look at the real power in the world.”
He was right.
Dear Jeffrey died a few weeks ago, loved and surrounded by friends and family, but he would have laughed long and hard over this latest FIFA iniquity. One of the prevailing theories was that Asian-style match-fixing would never prevail in Europe or North America. The sports people would be too honest.
Jeffrey’s theory? Once the Americans figured out a way of match-fixing for profit they would normalize and make bags of cash.
He was proven right.