In Camera

At the start of 2016, we already knew FIFA would change after both Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini recieved long bans from the ethics committee which practically ended their careers. The question was how much it would change, and in which ways. The February elections gave hope, as delegates surprised everyone, and elected Platini’s favourite UEFA bureaucrat Gianni Infantino instead of sheik Salman, who had accusations of serious human rights violations against him. A reform plan had already been sketched up, and the ethics committee, which since its birth have been widely criticized for just being Blatter’s window dressing to shut up critics, suddenly shot off sentences like a mitrailleuse. Surely the only way was up for FIFA on the credibility charts?

But anyone naïve enough to believe the organization would now suddenly become a beacon of good governance, best practice and transparency would soon be disillusioned. Already in the election process leading up to the anticipated congress in February, in fact. FIFA had a panel to assure no one could run for its top seat without passing an integrity check, where sheik Salman strolled through without hindrance. Questions could certainly be asked of Infantino too, as it was well known by now that he had signed off a deal on behalf of UEFA where lucrative Champions League media rights were sold off for trinklets to an obscure company based on what must be the tiniest and most remote tax haven in the world. Other candidates, who actually promised something concrete to take FIFA the right direction in their manifestos, were basically out of the race before it had begun. Infantino, jetting around the world to lesser football nation João Havelange-style, to quite a few of them in a private jet owned by a South African billionaire, knew how to play the game. Words of reform and transparency was to be used often, but nothing substantial promised. Instead, concrete promises made was how much more money each federation would receive if they voted for him. Benjamin Franklin famously said democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting over what to have for dinner. At FIFA, however, everyone get their share. Among the 209 congress members there are no sheep (stop sniggering at the back!), but masters and puppets of politics. Not only football politics, but also the kind FIFA tries to ignore; geopolitics.

It was geopolitics which elevated Aleksander Ceferin from top scorer of an amateur football team made up of lawyers, and in effect made UEFA part of Russia’s sphere of influence, and a tool in Putin’s scheme to regain Eastern European dominance. It was geopolitics which made Serbia keep quiet about Kosovo being admitted to UEFA, getting, among other things, a shipment of high-tech arms from Russia in return. And it’s geopolitics that enables Vitaly Mutko to run as a candidate to keep his spot in the FIFA council, despite abundant evidence he orchestrated a program to dope Russian athletes to success. Because there is no reason to think FIFA’s integrity checks will work this time either, as it clearly have failed in the appointments of Ceferin’s mate Tomaz Vesel and former vice president of scandal ridden Olympiakos, Theodore Giannikos. Because as questions were asked by world press after Josimar revealed Tomaz Vesel’s close links to Aleksander Ceferin, FIFA simply sent out a memo where they announced eligibility checks would be done in an ad hoc fashion, simultaneously throwing their written rules over board. Anything must go to whether the storm sail safely into the harbour, apparently.

In a recent interview with Spanish newspaper Marca, Gianni Infantino declared FIFA to have become a cleaner and much more transparent organization under his watch. You can laugh out loud now, if you like. With almost ten months at the helm, it has been a parade of decisions which at best can be seen as poor judgement. The latest, a 48-team World Cup played in groups of three, which makes for Austria-West Germany 1982 repeat itself as both a farçe and a tragedy. FIFA announced this option was the best after it had run 10,000 tournament simulations through a computer. Whether they encountered scenarios like the above mentioned is unknown, but they admitted that from a spectator’s view point the 32 team format currently in use gave higher quality matches. A 48-team option, however, will yield 10% more revenue. Which certainly must be the main priority for a non profit organization, one must presume. All this was concluded in a 64-page report, which the public of course haven’t been allowed to see.

No, FIFA has not improved significantly in the transparency department. Rather on the contrary. The cleptocratic old guard under Sepp Blatter, with the likes of Jack Warner, Chuck Blazer and Ricardo Teixeira, had such levels of arrogance that their unsophisticated shoplifting actually made it easier to reveal wrongdoings. But the current bureaucrats at FIFA, an army of lawyers resembling Matrix-like agents more than guardians of the game, are much sturdier nuts for nosy reporters. Supervised by the consultants from Quinn Emmanuel/Teneo, Infantino can rest assured no leaks will be given. Not even by his ousted enemies like Sepp Blatter or Domenico Scala. The time when someone like Andrew Jennings could get documents from FIFA employees in exchange for overpriced drinks at a Zurich bar is over. Yes, there have been leaks, like the recording of the executive meeting where Infantino was heard plotting Scala’s downfall. But these leaks have been planted in the press in a political battle on the inside, and haven’t revealed what would really tell us what’s wrong with FIFA; how media rights are given, how World Cup hosts are chosen, and how executive and committee decisions are taken.

Much attention in the press have been given to FIFA’s sponsors, and rightfully so. But the fuel in FIFA’s engine is the sale of media rights, and hence the source of all the corruption that triggered FIFAGate in the first place. It is important to note that companies indicted so far are mostly small intermediaries with no means of broadcasting or publishing any content themselves. It is naïve to think media behemoths like FOX and Televisa aren’t involved, or had no inkling that their sub-companies bribed themselves to lucrative deals they benefited immensely from. But these are probably too big for even the US Department of Justice to touch with anything more than a settlement fee(as the political fallout from jeopardizing tens of thousands of jobs would be undesirable). But FIFA should have taken the lesson by now that rights must instead be sold to real media companies directly, in a transparent way, and force confederations and federations to follow the same guidelines.

Broadcasting rights sales is also a significant reason selecting World Cup hosts have been so controversial. Changes are being made here, but not the right ones, as there is nothing in them to avoid back room deals potentially involving brown envelopes and political manipulation. Yes, delegates will now vote instead of the executive committee, but they are not yet obliged to follow recommendations in the bid inspection reports. In other words, there’s nothing to stop future World Cups being awarded to the likes of Qatar again. Neither the FIFA president or the ethics committee have shown any sign of will to publish the infamous Garcia report, which most probably holds recommendations to amend this problem. On the contrary. Hans-Joachim Eckert’s alibi to not publish the report has so far been that disciplinary cases resulting from the investigations by Garcia aren’t completed yet. They are all processed from FIFA’s part, but the man who lead the bid inspection team for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, Harold Mayne-Nicholls, is still waiting for FIFA’s Appeal Committee to deliver the grounds for their decision before he can appeal to the Court of Arbitration in Sports(CAS). At the time of writing, it is nine months since that committee lowered his ban from seven to three years. That’s the duration of a pregnancy just to tell him why they took their decision. Add to that that Mayne-Nicholls first waited over six months to receive the grounds from the ethics committee after their verdict, all the while Michel Platini’s case was sped through the same system in record speed. This is just one example of the not-so-independent-anymore-and-was-it-really-ever ethics committee’s, along with other controlling organisms in FIFA, many defects. The ethics committee has certainly been busy after May 2015, in stark contrast to the time preceding it(bar the revelations from The Sunday Times, which gave them no choice). But it has all been low-hanging fruit where external forces like the DoJ has bent the branches downwards for them, making it easy for Cornel Borbely and Eckert to make an easy buck.

Yes, FIFA has become the lawyer’s never emptying honey pot. Instead of Tricky Ricky filling his suitcase with illicit cash we now have this featureless army enriching themselves in legal ways, even if the moral ones are still in high demand. And instead of the Blatter era’s omertá, the mantra has become in camera. A legal term meaning a case where the press or the public are not allowed to observe the procedure or process. For the good of their game.