In the bad old days at Fifa, not very long ago at all – days which the new president, Gianni Infantino, told the annual congress in Bahrain the organisation has left behind – a swamp of corruption prevailed behind walls of denial.
Loyal executive committee henchmen of the embattled president, Sepp Blatter, would rise with a show of regret from their seats at the top table and denounce reports as “lies”, lambasting reporters hunched at the back of the hall for attacking the “Fifa family”.
Infantino was presented as the European clean-up candidate last year when he won the election for a new era following the ethics committee’s banning of Blatter and Michel Platini, Infantino’s former boss as president of Uefa and previously a shoo-in for the Fifa presidency.
European football breathed relief when Infantino beat the rival candidate, Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain’s ruling family which brutally suppressed 2011 democracy protests with documented human rights abuses.
Yet here was the new, clean, football-facing Fifa gathering only 15 months on, with Infantino thanking Salman and his brother, Sheikh Nasser bin Hamad (bin Isa) Al Khalifa, for the “honour and privilege” of being hosted in Bahrain.
Fresh from the abrupt defenestration of the ethics committee chairmen, Cornel Borbely and Hans-Joachim Eckert, two days earlier, Infantino then launched into an eerily familiar attack on the media, channelling the leadership charisma of Donald Trump.
It sounded like the same old tune but with updated lyrics: “Fake news, alternative facts: these terms did not exist until some time ago,” Infantino began. “They have become in vogue. There is a lot of fake news and alternative news about Fifa circulating. Fifa bashing has become a national sport, especially in some countries.”
The main news this week was the indignant reaction of Eckert and Borbely, who complained that after doing the heavy lifting, taking on difficult cases including those of Blatter and Platini, they were given no notice at all that their services were being discarded at the expiry of their four-year terms.
Reduced to hiring a bare room on the 13th floor of a tower block opposite the convention centre where a slick congress was expertly rolled out, Eckert and Borbely complained they had “hundreds of cases” pending. The removal of their experience meant Fifa’s corruption fight was neutralised and incapacitated, they said.
Rumours circulating that the two chairmen would be replaced identified Infantino as the instigator, saying he had been angered by the ethics committee’s investigation into his own use of private jets last year, which ultimately cleared him of any wrongdoing.
David Gill, the FA’s representative on the Fifa Council which did not renominate Eckert and Borbely, confirmed the new names came from Fifa’s administration: Maria Claudia Rojas, a former president of the council of state in Colombia, and Vassilios Skouris, a former president of the European court of justice.
Infantino told a press conference after the congress he had not been behind this change, and the spirit of Trump wafted into that comment too: “I have no issue with either Eckert or Borbely; everything is open, clear and free,” he said. “I am probably the most scrutinised person in the world. What happened is a simple question of due process.”
Asked what he had meant by “fake news” and “Fifa bashing” Infantino did not back down and he produced an intriguing explanation: “A lot of people are spreading a lot of wrong and false information,” he said, alleging it emanated from people opposed to him.
“When I took over at Fifa, one of the points I was most surprised with was the resistance to change. Of course, it is a new president, there are some new measures, some people in organisations who don’t like change. Human beings don’t like change. There is a resistance. A lot of people are spreading wrong information just to harm the organisation, so this was my example of Fifa bashing.”
It sounded as if it had not been enough for that extraordinary opportunity to open up, for him to claim the ultimate job for a career Swiss sports administrator; now he wants to crush the saboteurs. Asked for an example of fake news, he shrugged and said: “Generally, it’s my feeling.”
When he won in Zurich in his suit and tie last year Infantino seemed callow next to Salman’s air of inherited entitlement; like a young company man, tapping his heart in amazement at his vaulting over-promotion. But he has shown himself since then to be a graduate of the same Swiss training in the politics of power at sports governing bodies, the mechanics of keeping friends close and the football associations’ development dollars flowing, for which Blatter wrote the text book.
Despite endlessly repeated assurances of transparency, there has not been much about how and why Eckert and Borbely were removed. Fifa said the confederations had pushed them for more diversity of gender and geographical location of committee chairmen, hence the introduction of Rojas, a Colombian woman – although Skouris appears to be a Greek male.
Infantino offered the same explanation – being a European man – for the removal after eight months of Miguel Maduro, the Portuguese politician who, as chair of the governance committee, had led the tough refusal of clearance to the Russian deputy prime minister, Vitaly Mutko, to stand again for the Fifa council.
The English FA, which is being quietly compliant in Infantino’s regime, confirmed it approved the replacements. Gill said the new nominees had good CVs and what happened was due process.
Infantino was oddly combative and rough round the edges even when presenting Fifa’s financial figures, from an intensely bruising 2015-16 in which $50m has been spent on legal fees alone, dealing with the exhumation of the corrupt skeletons in the cupboards of Fifa House.
The organisation made a $369m loss last year, the midpoint of the four years leading to the 2018 World Cup which, despite questions over which companies will be prepared to take up the vacant sponsorships, is projected to make a $100m profit overall. “The figures are extremely solid,” he said. “We don’t have to bullshit you with artificial figures.”
He has sought in the move away from scandal to put “football first”, fronted by the “legends”, former greats led by Diego Maradona who now regularly perform at Fifa events. They did so in a tournament at the Bahrain national stadium on Wednesday but the image produced is perhaps not quite as Infantino, who plays with them, intends.
The sight of Maradona, tottering 30 years after his prodigious World Cup feats like just another pot-bellied 50-something playing five-a-side, tends to inspire gloomy reflections on ageing and lost youth rather than the pure magic of the people’s game.
The morning at the Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre had opened with pleasantries for the ruling Al Khalifa family. Sheikh Nasser said it was “monumental” for the country to host the Fifa congress, a furtherance of the state’s association with global sports-related events that include the F1 grand prix and the new Bahrain Merida professional cycling team, which human rights groups argue are used to wrap the regime in legitimacy.
Al Khalifa said his government believes in fair play and tolerance, inclusion and social change, which sport can promote. Hosting the Fifa congress, he said, “adds another dimension to our national vision: an island participating in the success of global sports movements”.
Infantino referred in his speech to Fifa’s human rights commitments, which includes an advisory board formed principally to assess the treatment of migrant workers building World Cup 2022 stadiums in Qatar. “Fifa makes human rights a priority,” Infantino said. “We need to promote human rights.”
Making time to condemn corruption, he told the delegates of 209 FAs assembled in the hall: “We are rebuilding Fifa’s reputation after all that happened, we have taken over an organisation which was at its deepest point. If there is anyone who is in the room who thinks he can abuse football and enrich himself, I have one message: Leave. Leave football now. We don’t want you.”
There was restrained applause at that. Barely a fortnight ago, as the preparations for this congress were being made, the US Department of Justice unveiled another guilty plea, by Richard Lai, president since 2001 of the FA in Guam. Lai pleaded guilty to banking more than $950,000 in bribes, including from the now banned former Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed bin Hammam and also implicating his rival, the sports politics kingmaker Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait.
Ahmad resigned all his football positions and withdrew his candidacy for the Fifa council while saying that he vigorously denied any wrongdoing. Less noticed in that indictment was that it said of Ahmad and his co-conspirator: “Ultimately their goal was to gain control of the AFC by ensuring that their allies obtained positions of leadership within the AFC.” The indictment claims their ally was Sheikh Salman of Bahrain, described as “candidate 1”, and that “their efforts were ultimately successful” when he was elected president of the AFC in 2013. No wrongdoing is alleged against Salman himself and the AFC did not respond to a request from the Guardian for Salman to comment.
In the odd gathering of the new Fifa in the Gulf heat of Bahrain, with departing ethics committee chairmen raging and Infantino denouncing “fake news”, nobody gave that a mention.