Gianni Infantino – A man of many questions and few answers | OneFootball

Gianni Infantino has been in the news recently, criticising Premier League clubs for the vast amounts they have paid to agents, resulting in large sums of money going out of the game.

While the majority reaction seems to be that he has a point. The overwhelming caveat to that is that he is also being hypocritical in view of his own position and past actions.

So who is Gianni Infantino and how entitled is he to be taking a moral stance against anyone else who is making a living from the game of football?

The President of FIFA is a complex and interesting character. The son of Italian immigrants, he was born in Switzerland and has joint citizenship of both countries. Clearly an intelligent individual, he has a law degree and speaks Swiss, Italian and German as first languages but also speaks Arabic, English, Portuguese and Spanish.

He was elected President of FIFA in February 2016, then re-elected in June 2019 and again in March 2023. In January 2020, he was also elected a member of the International Olympic Committee.

According to Sports Business Journal (18 March 2024):

“Infantino’s pre-tax base salary payment rose by more than $565,000 last year to reach more than $2.78M. His annual bonus was worth $1.87M, the “same as in 2022 when the men’s World Cup was played in Qatar.” Infantino had a home in Qatar to oversee preparations for the 2022 tournament and “now spends time in Florida,” which does not have a state income tax.

During his tenure as President he has overseen two world Cups which have been great successes organisationally but both dogged with controversy. Russia, 2018, was especially suspect in terms of the selection process with many allegations of corruption being levelled at FIFA. Substantiating those claims proved to be impossible when the Russians revealed that all of the laptops used in the bidding process had been leased, handed back and then destroyed or disappeared afterwards.

A FIFA enquiry found that the Russians had not done anything wrong. Greg Dyke, then FA Chairman, wasn’t surprised, saying:

‘Those who co-operated the most seemed to be the ones that gave them the information by which they were then criticised, like the FA.

‘Others, who didn’t co-operate, didn’t get criticised at all. Well, there’s a surprise.’

Qatar 2022 was another controversial pick. Not only was the bidding process again the subject of speculation regarding corruption but the vast building project of the World Cup infrastructure was heavily criticised. In particular, the labour pool of largely Third World citizens was viewed by many as, essentially, a slave labour force with accusations of passports being withheld to compel workers to carry on against their will, wages not being paid and a very alarming rate of death and injuries on the various sites.

Infantino himself added to the controversy by relocating to Qatar for more than a year before the tournament, claiming he needed to be there for logistical reasons. He lived in a very expensive apartment and his children were educated in an exclusive private school. Many people at the time were highly critical of the President of the body which had awarded the contract then living in the host country and showing very close ties to the government.

Lots of questions were asked at the time. Rémi Dupré, writing for Le Monde on November 19, 2022 was very suspicious of his motives, saying:

“Since FIFA’s 2016 reform, the president of FIFA is only supposed to play a representative and strategic role, rather than an operational one. With Qatar announcing that the eight planned stadiums were delivered almost a year ahead of schedule, why did Mr. Infantino decide to move to Doha? What does he do there? Who pays the rent on his house? Are any of his family members working for the Qatar 2022 Organizing Committee? FIFA has not answered these questions.”

Infantino described each tournament in turn as the “best ever.” There’s another surprise, Mr Dyke!

Even before becoming President of FIFA he was embroiled in scandal. In July 2020 further allegations arose when Infantino was accused of having a secret meeting with Michael Lauber. the Attorney General of Switzerland. According to French sport journal Francs Jeux.com, the meeting was held in 2015 and,

“According to information from Monde and Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the FIFA president would have sought information from the Swiss prosecutor’s office, in July 2015, about possible prosecutions concerning Sepp Blatter, then at the head of FIFA, and Michel Platini, in a strong position to succeed him.” (Francs Jeux.com April 2 2020)

Lauber offered to resign after a court said he covered up the meeting and lied to supervisors during an investigation by his office into corruption surrounding FIFA. (BBC Sport. 30 July 2020)

His tenure as FIFA President has continued to be mired in controversy. In 2016 he was interviewed by the FIFA Ethics Committee investigating three areas of concern: “several flights taken by Mr. Infantino during the first months of his presidency, human resources matters related to hiring processes in the president’s office, and Mr. Infantino’s refusal to sign the contract specifying his employment relationship with FIFA.”(The Independent. 5 August 2016.)

The questions of expenses and governance were not, in the end, investigated. This was in spite of a leaked document which showed inappropriate spending:

“The document revealed that Infantino had billed FIFA for personal expenses such as £8,795 for mattresses at his home, £6,829 for a stepper exercise machine, £1,086 for a tuxedo, £677 on flowers and £132 on personal laundry. In addition to that he billed the FIFA governing body for an external driver for his family and advisors while he was away.”(BBC Sport. 14 July 2016)

Maybe not on the same scale as the millions trousered by agents but if those examples are at all representative of the sort of remuneration Gianni Infantino was claiming – not to mention his lucrative salary and bonus payments – then it seems a bit rich, to say the least, that he should now be trumpeting about those players’ representatives “taking money out of the game”.

“Being labelled as someone selfishly removing much needed cash from the game by Gianni Infantino is like being called ugly by a bullfrog”!