Lausanne (AFP)

Difficult to quantify and left to last, the devastation of Covid-19 on world football will be on the menu Friday of the 70th Fifa Congress, which sees a flood of requests for its emergency aid.

One year after the re-election of Gianni Infantino at the head of the body, this 2020 edition should have been held on June 5 in Addis Ababa, to allow the 211 member federations to endorse a once again prosperous 2019-2022 cycle.

It was counting without the coronavirus, which put world sport on a standstill for several months, upset calendars, eroded TV rights and imposed strict health protocols when matches resumed, in empty stadiums.

"The estimated disruption is around $ 14 billion," or "approximately a third of the football economy," said Olli Rehn, Finnish central banker responsible for managing FIFA's Covid fund, on Wednesday.

South American football has "suffered quite heavily", on a continent hit hard by the pandemic, even if "in absolute terms" Europe shows more important losses, he underlined.

He nevertheless admitted the great uncertainty around these figures, which is due to the evolution of the health situation but also to the accessibility of rapid tests and the development of vaccines, two key factors for a return to normal.

- Strict controls -

Finally held by videoconference from the headquarters in Zurich, the annual meeting of Fifa will therefore focus on the revised accounts, as well as on "support for the football community in this unprecedented crisis", announces the body.

Fifa has already unveiled at the end of June an emergency envelope of 1.5 billion dollars: it draws for this in its development program "Forward", already endowed with 1.7 billion dollars over four years , by adding 328.5 million euros taken from its reserves, she told AFP on Thursday.

In detail, each federation will be able to receive $ 1 million in grants, as well as an additional $ 500,000 for women's football, while the confederations will be allocated $ 2 million.

The organization also provides interest-free loans of between $ 500,000 and $ 5 million, representing a maximum volume of $ 556 million.

"More than 150 member associations" have already requested this help, mainly in the form of subsidies, identified Wednesday Olli Rehn, promising strict controls on the use of these funds.

The question is sensitive, not only because of the accusations of embezzlement that have punctuated the history of Fifa, but also because the Covid does not hit the football world in a uniform way.

- Danger on small clubs -

"Very few leagues are today able to live off television rights. Most clubs live on ticketing revenues, which have almost disappeared," said a specialist in professional football bodies to AFP.

In addition, the slowdown in transfers penalizes clubs whose model is based on the sale of players they have trained or developed, much more than the European leaders whose bench is overflowing.

"The little ones will be very affected," predicts the same source.

This finding overlaps with the study published in early July by the ECA, the European club union, for which the payroll alone should swallow up on average 76% of income in secondary championships, against 69% in the European Top 5 (England, Germany, Spain, Italy, France).

On the revenue side, those of Fifa have hardly suffered from the pandemic, "the majority of commercial rights having already been sold", indicates the instance in its annual report: it expects $ 6.44 billion in revenue between 2019 and 2022, against 6.56 billion in the initial budget, including 4.68 billion for the year 2022 alone when the Qatari World Cup will be held.

The Zurich body also has a war chest of 2.74 billion dollars, designed as a two-stage rocket: 1.5 billion "minimum reserves", kept no matter what, and 1.24 billion in "excess reserves" available for the Covid plan.

© 2020 AFP