Gianni Infantino, the man who moved soccer balls

Gianni Infantino was the one with the balls.

The man in charge of jokes and good vibes at the ceremonies that UEFA organized in Nyon to design the crosses for their European competitions.

A likeable and self-made lawyer who, after holding various positions in the European football confederation, became its general secretary.

First as squire of the great dominator of UEFA, Lennart Johansson (president from 1990 to 2007);

then, from his successor, Michel Platini (in office from 2007 to 2015), with whom he established a great friendship.

Frustrated footballer, his life always hung number two on his back.

That was the fate of him.

He himself gave him care when he ended up rebounding in the position that his boss wanted at the head of FIFA.

A position that Platini had to resign amid accusations of corruption.

Infantino would only occupy it until the Frenchman was acquitted.

He kept the chair for her, in short.

But right there, he began to execute the plan that he had been silently building for years.

And the one with the balls, the one with the jokes, stopped being funny to many.

Infantino, 52, the man who has completed the transformation of FIFA into a global political organization, is today the center of all criticism due to the embarrassing World Cup being played in Qatar.

An event comparable only to the one that FIFA allowed the Argentina of the dictator Videla to organize in 1978 and that has cost the lives of thousands of workers, according to

.

Infantino, a graduate in law and football management, was not the one who made that decision.

He was not even in charge of the body when the executive committee, in a vote on which enormous suspicions weigh, awarded the emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani -also owner of PSG- the celebration of him.

But he has to bear it.

And seen the speeches of the last days, it does not seem that it is reluctant.

“He feels the weight of managing something that he did not want and he is obliged to defend it.

And it has already happened to him with two World Cups [the one in Russia and the one in Qatar] ”, explains a friend of hers.

That is partly why he went to live in Doha a year ago, where he has become a myth.

“He can't take two steps without being stopped.

In restaurants they do not stop asking for selfies.

they love it.

He has become almost emotional ”, insists this source.

The World Cup is putting FIFA on the ropes.

Denmark has already threatened to leave the organization due to the violation of human rights that has occurred during the organization of the event.

And there are more States evaluating this measure.

Infantino, far from admitting mistakes, started with an exotic revisionism and an attack on Europe.

“I am not Qatari, I am not African, I am not Arab, I am not gay, I am not a migrant worker… But I know what it is to be

for being different at school, for being redheaded.

That's why it's not easy to read reviews each and every day for 12 years now.

There is a double standard.

I am European.

For what we Europeans have done to the world in the past 3,000 years, we should apologize for the next 3,000."

Only one thing seems irrefutable in his speech: he did not have an easy childhood.

Giovanni Vincenzo Infantino, married to the Lebanese Lina al-Ashkar and father of four daughters, was born on March 23, 1970 in Brig, in the canton of Valais in southern Switzerland.

A town in the shadow of the Alps and just 10 kilometers along the Rhône from Visp, the birthplace of Joseph Blatter, his predecessor in office and the man from whose stigma he wanted to distance himself.

“The big question is whether his was a restoration or a revolution.

But it is already clear: he has acted with great continuity with the model of Havelange and Blatter.

Especially with the planetary development of soccer”, says Marco Bellinazzo, author of

.

(Feltrinelli, 2022).

The son of Italian immigrants (a Calabrian father and a Lombard mother), Infantino never renounced his transalpine nationality or his customs.

But those were still difficult years for poor families —and they were— who emigrated to Switzerland in search of a better future.

Hard work.

Even cleaning trains to pay for university law studies in Freiburg.

An origin that has marked him a lot in personal relationships and at work, says a person who has worked with him at FIFA.

“He is someone nice and empathetic.

But he lives fascinated by big names and power.

He accuses an important social complex, of the poor Calabrian immigrant who wants to be accepted in society ”.

The measure of the president's transformation could be given by that childhood trauma that he himself describes as bullying for speaking bad German and having red hair.

The only reality years later is that he speaks six languages ​​(Italian, French, German, Spanish, English and Arabic) and is bald.

Nobody expected that this nice second son would settle in the position reserved for Michel Platini, who today is convinced that he was the victim of his maneuver with the Swiss prosecutor's office.

“He said that he would keep the site until his implications in a corruption case in which he was involved with Blatter [for the payment of two million Swiss francs received in 2011 from the then FIFA president for consultancies carried out between 1998 and 2011] were clarified. 2002].

But he didn't really think about it for a second.

Platini hasn't even been invited to the World Cup!”, says the Italian sports journalist Paolo Condó.

Infantino seized the opportunity, stood in a close election and won Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa of Bahrain in the second round.

He then colored his mandate with the idea of ​​renovation and cleansing.

Gianni Infanino, in the Poland-Saudi Arabia match of the World Cup in Qatar.

ISSEI KATO (REUTERS)

The real transformation —beyond introducing VAR in the World Cup in Russia— has consisted in giving much more power to Asia and Africa by reformulating the voting model and giving the same power to each of the 211 federations.

In this way, the all-powerful 24-member executive committee that made the main decisions is diluted.

“I feel like the African candidate”, he said when he closed his last campaign with the support of illustrious people from the continent like Samuel Eto'o.

"Infantino decided to leave the most important vote to the assembly because the committee was easier to corrupt," says Bellinazzo.

But the numbers are unbalanced and most of that power is now in Africa, Asia and North America.

Europe and South America, which have always carried the weight of the decisions, are in the minority with 65 votes out of the 211 total.

"That is why Asia and Africa have been the first to support Infantino with the third term in 2023," insists Bellinazzo.

But, can the negative impact of this World Cup change anything in his career?

One of the FIFA members who knows him well thinks not.

"Absolutely not.

It won't affect you at all.

It is that he is the only candidate for that third term!

His election will be a triumphal march.

Also, he is not like Blatter.

There are no real signs of corruption weighing on him.

This is the dream of his life and he won't let anything spoil it."

It will cost him something more, yes, to achieve the support of the European sector, increasingly displaced.

The Swiss took command of FIFA and one of the first decisions in which he was involved was to award the 2026 World Cup to Mexico and the US, which was then governed by Donald Trump.

It was after the FBI and the Prosecutor's Office of that country put FIFA on the ropes and, coincidentally or not, Loreta Lynch, the attorney general who led the investigation, ended up working in the organization that Infantino presides over today.

She did not award Russia the World Cup under her command, but her relationship with Putin is impeccable (in 2019 she awarded him the Order of Friendship).

His problem, however, is not today in FIFA, which holds all the political power in football.

His stone in the shoe continues in Europe - on Friday the European Parliament asked its members to condemn the "rampant corruption" of FIFA - and, above all, in UEFA,

The president has tried to promote the Club World Cup or the biennial World Cup, without much success.

"He put it in the mouth of the Saudis, but it was his will," says a FIFA source.

For the same reason, it has increased the participation in the next World Cup from 32 countries to 48. And following the same financial logic, many, like the president of the League, Javier Tebas, pointed to it as one of the people who could be behind the Super League, a missile on the waterline of UEFA.

"Infantino is a close friend of Florentino Pérez and his relationship with Ceferin is very bad, that's true.

But the night the Super League issue was announced he went to the UEFA congress dinner in Montreux and made a very strong speech against that proposal.

You would have to be a great actor to come to our house and blurt that out if it wasn't true."

points out a member of UEFA.

He also said that he would save Platini's place.

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