They say that fear does not walk on a donkey, and the boss of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, had no choice but to apply the handbrake before the blood reached the river.
After the door slammed in the face that greeted his brilliant idea of privatizing and commercially exploiting the tournaments of the entity he presides, the Swiss opted for the peace of the tombs and sent the controversial FIFA Forward Enterprise project to the freezer, the one that was supposedly going to bathe the so-called “football family” in gold.
Infantino forgot that ambition breaks the bank. The theater collapsed as soon as the opposition front stood firm on the field: Conmebol and the CAF (Asian Confederation) did not want to be left behind and joined the iron block of UEFA and Concacaf.
Nobody in their right mind was going to give the Virgin's pearls to foreign investors or New York funds linked to American politics, even though the leak to the media spoke of a juicy purse of 20 billion dollars. The threat of a European boycott of not playing the World Cup was the coup de grace that forced him to back down.
Seeing that a real rebellion was coming on the farm, the top boss of Zurich had no choice but to take out the fire extinguisher and launch a statement with a diplomacy so practiced that it is even tender: "The FIFA Forward Enterprise project was intended to lay the foundations to further strengthen our Member Associations... However, after having listened carefully to all opinions, it has become clear that the project has generated divisions... Therefore, this proposal will not go ahead. My intention is to bring all parties together again interested.”
Translated into Christian: the business got out of hand, the federations painted their line and, rather than causing a historic schism that cost it the presidential seat in the elections, FIFA preferred to keep the contracts under lock and key and pretend that nothing happened here.
And the bills for those below?
The real joke of the matter is that Infantino wanted to justify this robbery by arguing that the money was “for the good of those most in need.” He had promised the small and island federations—those that live off the check from Zurich—to triple their bonuses up to 40 million greenbacks if they signed the pact with the commercial devil.
When the theater of privatization falls, these countries will be left wanting to open new fields and offices. For their part, the people in long pants in Doña Fede (FMF) and the rest of Concacaf breathe a sigh of relief; They prefer to continue exploiting their own business with the “paisa” market in the United States than to hand over the keys to the global business to a private fund that would force them to render transparent accounts.
In the end, “romantic” football won nothing; Simply put, the owners of the ball defended their gold mine.
