Infantino on Saturday shelved the scheme<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI do not think we have ever seen such a fast fall from grace by a sports leader,\u201d Michael Payne, former head of marketing at the International Olympic Committee, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne week ago, Infantino was riding high from delivering a very successful World Cup, and expected to run unopposed for election next year to continue his mandate as president of FIFA.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow Infantino will struggle to survive the month.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow does he find himself in this mess \u2013 gross hubris!\u201d<\/p>\n
The signs are not good for the 56-year-old Swiss, with European football\u2019s governing body UEFA and CONCACAF \u2013 which includes the three recent co-hosts of the World Cup, the US, Canada and Mexico \u2013 among those expressing their discontent over his leadership.<\/p>\n
UEFA said he had lost their \u201cconfidence\u201d with his \u201cshabby deal\u201d. CONCACAF called for \u201ca comprehensive reckoning with this presidency\u201d.<\/p>\n
Payne, who in nearly two decades at the IOC helped modernise the organisation\u2019s brand and improve its finances, said he feared the fall-out if Infantino stayed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI learnt long ago to never say never in this world, but this is going to take more than a miracle for Infantino to survive,\u201d said the 68-year-old Irishman.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see how any amount of lobbying or \u2018persuasion\u2019 of the smaller countries can save him.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis leadership has become radioactive, and if he stays there will be total civil war in global football, with breakaways by leading nations and boycotts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIts over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Terrence Burns, who was brand and marketing strategist for two successful World Cup hosting bids, told AFP he had never seen \u201canything mismanaged and bungled so badly by people so smart\u201d.\n<\/p>\n
\u2018Played it well\u2019<\/p>\n
However, Burns said that even though Infantino\u2019s position is \u201cprecarious\u201d, it is not beyond repair even if a challenger does emerge for the vote in Rabat next year.<\/p>\n
He said that UEFA had resorted to the \u201cnuclear option\u201d of threatening a World Cup boycott but in FIFA elections \u201cconfederations do not vote as a bloc\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the individual associations that receive development money from Zurich,\u201d said Burns, adding that Africa (CAF) and Oceania could be pivotal.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf CAF stays with him, he can lose Europe, Asia, and CONCACAF in public and still win in the hall.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf CAF moves, it\u2019s game over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burns said Infantino has wasted all his capital and a 64-team World Cup might not be enough of a sweetener.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think expansion sells when it reads as access,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut offered now, weeks after an attempt to sell a fifth of the asset that generates the money, it reads as a payment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Burns said Infantino\u2019s authority has taken a hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing he\u2019s lost is inevitability, which in this business is a real asset,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was unopposed in 2019 and 2023 because serious people don\u2019t run against someone who can\u2019t be beaten.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that calculation changed this week, before the 18 November nomination deadline.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the part I\u2019d be most worried about if I were in his camp.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Burns the winners were the \u201csport itself\u201d and UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe played it well,\u201d said Burns.<\/p>\n
\u201cUEFA carried the fight collectively while he issued no personal statement at any point, which means he can now stand, or not stand, (for the FIFA presidency) without having spent anything on the argument.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe boycott threat was aggressive and credible, which is a rare pairing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FIFA PRESIDENT GIANNI Infantino\u2019s leadership has become \u201cradioactive\u201d and his 10-year reign as head of world football \u201cis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,34476,22,6,19,260529,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,19413,35350],"class_list":["post-617077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-infantino","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-uefa","tag-world-cup"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117027597541606731","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}