Инфантиногийн санхүүгийн шинэ төлөвлөгөө хөлбөмбөгийн ертөнцөд шүүмжлэл дагууллаа

When Gianni Infantino looks in the mirror, what does he see?

How does he feel as he returns to his seat on the private jet provided by one of FIFA’s sponsors? What goes through his mind as he pulls a napkin over his lap at Cipriani and carries on dining with the FIFA legends?

He must feel pretty good upon returning to the VVIP suite at Los Angeles’ $5.5billion (£4.1bn at the current rate) SoFi Stadium to pick up where he left off with the billionaire class, not to mention the stars of stage and screen.

Bravo, Gianni. Not bad for the kid who didn’t fit in. The kid picked on at school for his freckles and ginger hair. The kid who didn’t speak good German upon arriving in Switzerland from Italy. The son of economic migrants.

Look at him now, the self-made Infantino. He moves effortlessly from the Kremlin to the Oval Office. The guest of presidents. Part of an Emir’s funeral party.

Even at ground level this is rarefied air, let alone at 35,000 feet. Thin, but thick with power.

It’s likely hard for all this not to go to your head; tough to step outside FIFA-landia and realise a 15-slidestory on the Gianni-gram has left you looking a little out of touch.

Even the slightest criticism must feel like “hate” to someone surrounded by the obsequious.

The old Infantino must get quite the buzz from being around players the young Infantino grew up watching. They now give over entire summers to attend the Club World Cup and World Cup at FIFA’s invitation. When Infantino appeared in front of the media at Trump Tower in Manhattan before the Club World Cup final last year, the FIFA legends stood behind him in much the same way Argentina line up in Lionel Messi’s shadow, except with grins replacing snarls. They have his back, all smiles, all expenses paid.

NFL owners, like “dear friend” Jerry Jones and Robert Kraft, were delighted to host some of Infantino’s “104 Super Bowls” this summer. They marvelled at the atmosphere of a tournament projected to return $15billion in revenue.

Infantino must have looked like the commissioner of global soccer, FIFA’s own Roger Goodell. He certainly carries himself that way. Except he officially makes a tenth of the $63.9million salary NFL commissioner Goodell takes home; closer to what a long snapper for Jones’ Dallas Cowboys or Kraft’s New England Patriots makes than the leader of America’s most popular sport. And this when Infantino is in charge of the world’s favourite pastime, a truly global phenomenon.

In that context, you wonder if he came away from the United States 10 days ago thinking maybe he isn’t doing so well, after all.

Maybe all he sees when he looks in the mirror is someone in an off-the-rack Boggi suit and white Adidas trainers.

For each of the past two years, Infantino has seemed to leave the U.S. conflicted; boastful on the one hand and yet also with the feeling that, if he’s not underpaid, then FIFA’s tournaments are still somehow undersized and undersold. This comes despite his own claims that the Club World Cup played there in 2025 was a “huge success” and the North America-hosted World Cup just gone was “the greatest sporting, social and cultural event in humanity”.

“I think we have to invent some new words,” Infantino said.

How about ‘Gianni-maxxing’?

A charitable definition of this word would be as follows: the president of a non-profit organisation optimising his institution’s ability to make more and more money through the creation of new competitions and the expansion of existing ones. Grateful member associations can then use their share of more and more money to develop the game and spread peace and love. And if the money they get isn’t enough, don’t worry. More and more money is coming.

This week, FIFA announced plans to set up a new company which will manage the game’s most cherished international event (and the Club World Cup). But here’s the kicker. FIFA wants to sell a large minority stake in it to private investors led by Josh Kushner’s Thrive Eternal.

The proposal, which is subject to approval, would expand development funding for FIFA’s 211 member nations to over $10billion. Imagine the infrastructure you could build with a slice of that in places such as Montserrat. Are you picturing a mini SoFi in Bhutan? I’m envisioning pitches that MetLife Stadium could only dream of on the island of Guam. Pitches of the lushest green. The colour of money.

What’s the compulsion to do any of this after the most lucrative World Cup ever?

Is it exposure to a warped version of the American dream, in which dizzying profit and self-interest for the few blurs with the ideals of progress for the many? Is there even any real need, when FIFA is sitting on billions of reserves and has more billions tied up in bonds, investments and other deposits? Why? Why? Why?

Did the FIFA legends run up a particularly egregious hotel bill? Was the fuel on Infantino’s jet more expensive than budgeted because of what’s going on in the Straits of Hormuz? I guess when someone orders wagyu tagliata at Cipriani, it ain’t going to pay for itself now, is it?

Don’t get me wrong. World Cups are expensive to organise, and that’s without the biggest cost in football; the clubs still pay the players involved… not FIFA.

On the one hand, you can’t help but marvel at Infantino. Just when you thought there was no more juice left in the squeeze, a potential $4.2billion squirts out from the prospective sale of a stake in a company that didn’t exist.

He is delivering unprecedented amounts of cash. Enough, you’d hope, to subsidise ticket prices and pay for fans’ visas when they travel to the next World Cup in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, with some Argentina, Uruguay (and Paraguay?!) thrown in for the centennial hell of it (it’s the 100-year anniversary of the tournament’s first edition, which was hosted by Uruguay).

Beyond further enriching member associations to whom you are appealing for votes in a one nation-one vote system, why create (what shall we call it?) a piece prize and let a geographically-diversified investor group buy in?

Leaving aside Kushner, who is definitely independent from the Trump administration, despite having Ivanka as a sister-in-law and a father who is U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco, can you imagine if something of the like had happened in 2019, when Infantino received the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation from Vladimir Putin?

Josh Kushner attending the Met Gala earlier this year (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)

What would we be saying now if the former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, for instance, had been named as the head of a hypothetical investor group for a fictional FIFA Forward Enterprise?

Football is full of cautionary tales (and, for the sake of balance, morally-dubious fairy tales) about the risks and rewards of taking on finance adjacent to or entangled with politics.

A deadline for member associations to approve the sell-off plan has been set for September 19 this year. It just so happens they have also been reminded that a vote to reject the $10billion package is a vote for the $2.7bn status quo.

FIFA’s member confederations did not exactly appreciate learning about the plan via an exclusive in UK newspaper The Times. Three of the six continental bodies — those representing Asia, North and Central America and the Caribbean, and Europe — expressed their “disappointment” at the lack of consultation. Only the latter seemed flat-out opposed to the scheme,though.

UEFA was particularly strong on the matter, and that is unsurprising given the resentment between Infantino and European-football counterpart Aleksander Ceferin.

UEFA claimed: “This crosses a line.” It later added: “Today we have learned of FIFA’s deadline to associations to support their proposals or have the one-off payout offer withdrawn. This says everything you need to know about this plan. But having held discussions with many stakeholders across the game, UEFA knows there is significant and growing opposition to FIFA’s scheme. FIFA cannot continue to use our sport to enrich themselves and their friends. We can grow the game correctly. It’s time to prioritise associations, clubs, leagues, players and fans.”

As the head of the largest continental confederation, Ceferin will now try to save football for a second time.

He helped see off the European Super League in April 2021, counting on the support of Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi and making a series of concessions, namely entering into a joint venture with the European Club Association (now the European Football Clubs) to oversee the management, sales and delivery of all commercial rights (including media, sponsorship and licensing rights) for UEFA’s elite men’s and women’s club competitions.

For all the attention given to what Infantino’s proposal means for the World Cup, one of the implicit problems a turbo-capitalised FIFA poses to UEFA is the value it could unlock and build into the Club World Cup. You laugh now, but in the event FIFA develops the Club World Cup further and makes the competition every two years rather than four, it could, gradually, pose a threat to the UEFA Champions League.

Before his team played Al Hilal of Saudi Arabia in the Club World Cup in Miami last June, Real Madrid president Florentino Perez expressed his thanks to Infantino, telling tournament broadcaster DAZN: “We have finally achieved something we have been fighting for for a long time.”

Amid this looming threat, can Ceferin now rally 55 of FIFA’s 211 member nations to refuse Infantino’s offer? The Czech FA has already broken ranks and backed the FFE plan. Infantino, after all, tends to find a way. First the Club World Cup happened, eclipsing its old, far-smaller annual version. Then the World Cup went from 32 teams to 48 for this year’s edition. The pitch has already been rolled for the next one to be enlarged to 64. When will it stop?

Perhaps Infantino is only responding to a general trend. One in which, even amid an affordability crisis experienced by millions and millions worldwide, headlines are made by the billions and billions being invested in sectors such as AI, to say nothing of media, sport and entertainment. One day Manchester City pay £116million for Elliot Anderson. The next, Chelsea buy Morgan Rogers for £117m in what feels like a game of one-upmanship rather than good business.

The game is obsessed by money to the extent some fans appear more interested these days in what happens in the transfer window than on the pitch. Who do you worship? Football gods like Maradona and Messi, or Mammon.

Argentina fans at the World Cup hold up a banner depicting Maradona and Messi (Koji Watanabe/Getty Images)

In such an environment, you can perhaps understand why Infantino and FIFA think they may as well crack on. Strike while the iron is hot. On Wednesday he defended the proposals in a five-minute video interview with… FIFA, describing it as a“democratic process” and “strengthening the commercial side of the game is the natural next step in (FIFA’s) evolution”.

But at what cost to the game itself?

As the European Leagues, a body which represents over 1,000 clubs across the continent, said in a statement: “The World Cup should not be for sale. It is not (the) FIFA president’s private equity asset. Its value is created day in and day out by leagues, clubs, players and supporters who are being left without a voice or a vote on this matter.”

And so it falls to those who do have a voice and a vote; the member associations. My FA. Your FA. They’re the ones who enable Infantino. They’re the ones who approve of him, unless proven otherwise.

There are exceptions, like the Norway FA’s president Lise Klaveness. Many of the others, for now, either lack the courage of Klaveness or, quite simply, still have confidence in him. He continues to take the public flak for what they sign off on in private. As long as they do, Infantino will reign supreme.

At the World Cup in Qatar four years ago, FIFA played Tiesto’s The Business before kick-off. In the United States, Canada and Mexico over the past two months, it swapped that out for a supervillain remix of David Guetta’s Titanium.

There must be some subliminal messaging involved. Is it Infantino’s personal mixtape? You can imagine him looking at the mirror, singing the Sia part back to himself as an affirmation. Critics take their aim. They ricochet. Fire away. Fire away. “I’m bulletproof. Nothing to lose.”

That Boggi suit? Maybe it’s Titanium.