Club World Cup truths do not matter to Gianni Infantino

Telegraph

a day ago

The Fifa president Gianni Infantino closed out the Club World Cup on Saturday as one assumes he intends to go on: surrounded by sycophants and making claims that are, as things stand, almost impossible to verify without the kind of scrutiny he will not permit.
He did so at a press briefing in the lobby of Trump Tower, accompanied by six of his 'Fifa legends', and determined to tell everyone that his new calendar-busting tournament had been a great success. He said $2.1 billion of revenue had been generated although from which sources he was unclear. 'We can say this Fifa Club World Cup has been a huge, huge, huge, success from different points of view,' he declared – but in the end we would have to take his word for it.
'We heard nobody will broadcast this,' said Infantino, in what sounded like a channelling of his inner anxieties. 'We came up with a one-of-a-kind revolution contract [sic] with DAZN – every game for free!' No mention of the Saudi investment vehicle SURJ Sports buying an unspecified stake in DAZN for $1 billion ahead of that broadcast deal.
Infantino claimed the Club World Cup had attracted an average crowd of 40,000. 'No league in the world,' he said, 'has an average of 40,000 apart from the Premier League!'
The Fifa president also seemed to say that the Club World Cup had attracted 'two to three billion' global viewers, another claim that seemed to be very high and was, again, impossible to verify. The barista machine in the coffee shop on the Trump Tower mezzanine level did at one point gurgle into life and make it difficult to hear him.
Infantino is an accomplished linguist but there was a collective wince when he joked that because of the good behaviour of fans and players, the Fifa disciplinary committee 'have never had such a nice holiday as they have here'. It certainly would not be the first nice holiday that a Fifa committee has enjoyed over the years at someone else's expense.
The Fifa officials around him were already nervous. Infantino prefers to present his own finessed content on his prolific Instagram feed rather than expose himself to the conventions of the adversarial independent media. In the end only two questions that might be considered challenging were permitted. The rest of us were ignored.
Among those that were approved was someone asking Infantino whether he could tell us if US president Donald Trump liked football. This is the kind of question the Fifa president is only too delighted to answer – offering him, as it does, the opportunity to speak about himself visiting the White House.
It was a bizarre occasion on many levels, not least because of Infantino's tactic of drawing one of his accompanying famous former players into the conversation. That meant that valuable time to question a man responsible for the biggest disruption to the biggest sport in the world was subject to a kind of filibuster.
The likes of Alessandro Del Piero and Hristo Stoichkov droned on in praise of Fifa, in the style of a Politburo address. The great Brazilian, Ronaldo, said that, all things considered, he really had to agree with Infantino that the Club World Cup had been a great success. A forlorn-looking Roberto Baggio tendered his endorsement.
These once great players were obliged to sing for their supper. Fifa covers their expenses – flights, hotels – on the understanding that they can pick up lucrative sponsors' work while in town. It is not enough for Fifa to monopolise the future – unfortunately they also want to monopolise the greats of yesteryear too.
What did we learn? Chiefly that Infantino was right and the rest of us were wrong. 'We heard that financially it [the Club World Cup] would not work,' Infantino ploughed onwards, 'that it would be a flop and no-one is interested. We generated over $2 billion in revenue for 63 matches – $33 million per match. There is no cup competition in the word that comes close. It is already the most successful cup competition in the world on all different measurements.'
This is the Infantino style – tell everyone what you would like the truth to be, refuse to go into the details, and then ask Ronaldo what he thinks. But we do know for sure that there are 39 domestic leagues around the world that feel so strongly about Fifa riding roughshod over the international calendar that they have launched a legal action against the governing body at the European Commission. That Fifpro, the players' union, has spoken out about the toll of player welfare and so too many of the players who have been in the United States.
Add to that the voice of Jurgen Klopp, a man who is not – like another famous former Premier League manager – beholden to Fifa and who says that the competition is 'the worst idea implemented in football'. Asked about Klopp's view, Infantino just said that he 'respects all opinions' but in the end he knows he can ride it out. He wants a stake in the vast broadcast revenue of elite club competition so badly that nothing can deter him.
The disruption does not end there: Chelsea, who play Paris St-Germain in Sunday's final, return home with more than $100 million banked. But it would not matter whether it was Chelsea or any other Premier League club – the point is how Fifa's intervention effects the delicate eco-systems of domestic football. Indeed, the effect is likely to be much more profound in leagues other than the English top-flight.
But this is the way that Infantino and others see the modern game. The biggest clubs in the world, led by the European elite, gravitating to global competitions, their wealth ever spiralling, and the creation of a new elite class that is inaccessible to the rest. The Super League never went away, it just took a different form.
In the meantime Infantino flapped a hand at questions about the intense matchday heat that has become such a concern for players and managers. He countered by recalling that the Olympics in Paris last year were hot too. There was something about having more cooling breaks. 'We have stadiums that are covered,' he shrugged, 'and we will use them more.' As for the empty seats at many games he said he would rather have a '35,000 crowd in an 80,000 stadium than a 20,000 crowd in a 20,000 stadium'. These, to him, are all mere details.
What is most important to Infantino is that a tournament he dreamed into existence has happened. A Fifa president who is more determined to fight Uefa for the game's wealth than any of his predecessors has seen it come to pass. The Saudis have paid for it. The South Americans have turned up. The nodding Fifa legends have said it is a good idea. On Sunday, Infantino will doubtless be praying that Trump will attend the MetLife Stadium for the ultimate Fifa final flex. As for what the rest of us think – I have to tell you, he really does not care. He much prefers his version.