Football: Gianni Infantino, unsurprisingly re-elected at the head of FIFA

Gianni Infantino, president of the International Football Federation (FIFA), during a meeting of the FIFA Council in Kigali, October 26, 2018. AFP - CYRIL NDEGEYA

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This Thursday, March 16, Gianni Infantino was re-elected until 2027 to the presidency of FIFA, which he has held since 2016, without competitor and by acclamation at the 73rd Congress of the body in Kigali, Rwanda.

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I love you all ", launched the boss of world football in front of the standing crowd, without the voting system having made it possible to count the dissenting votes.

The 52-year-old Italian-Swiss, already renewed under the same conditions in 2019 by the delegates of the 211 member federations, could remain until 2031 at the head of world football, his first three-year lease being considered incomplete. The statutes of the Zurich organisation normally provide for three terms of up to four years.

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Bringingfootball truly global

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Infantino claimed on Thursday that he wanted to "make football truly global", and stands as a bulwark against the sporting and economic hegemony of European football thanks to FIFA's development programs, boosted by its growing revenues.

The president of the Norwegian Federation, Lise Klaveness, had however warned that she would not support Infantino, and brought to the agenda a discussion on "reparation in case of human rights violations" related to FIFA competitions, calling for a death toll on the construction sites of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. and their compensation. The Europeans could not agree on a competing candidacy and Michel Platini's former confidant at UEFA (2009-2016), unexpectedly elected head of FIFA in February 2016 after a cascade of scandals, was sure to remain at the top of world football.

To his credit, Infantino can post a solid balance sheet, with an 18% increase in revenues and 45% in reserves in the 2019-22 cycle compared to the previous one, which allows FIFA to further increase its subsidies to confederations and federations.

On the governance side, her last mandate was marked by a vast reform of transfers, the institution of maternity leave for professional players and more protective disciplinary procedure rules for victims of sexual violence.

Exploding World Cup ticket revenues

Already, the main projects of the coming years have been approved: starting with the passage of the Men's World Cup from 32 to 48 teams from the 2026 edition shared between the United States, Canada and Mexico, decided in 2017 and whose format was set Tuesday, February 14. By opting for a group stage with twelve groups of four teams, the tournament will jump from 64 to 104 games, a juggernaut cut to explode ticket revenues and attract more and more broadcasters.

More delicate, FIFA decided, on December 16, 2022, to expand its Club World Cup from an annual seven-team format to a quadrennial competition with 32 teams from the summer of 2025. A project that his boss has been trying to achieve for years to compete with the lucrative UEFA Champions League, but which promises to be difficult to insert into the calendar.

This race to expand could well awaken the fractures of football. On the eve of his re-election, the World League Forum, bringing together about forty championships, denounced decisions "without consultation", which further burden "an already overloaded calendar, and take no account of the impact on the competitiveness of domestic leagues and the health of players".

A tribune who willingly personalizes his speech

UEFA Secretary General between 2009 and 2016 after having climbed the ladder, Infantino has become a tribune who willingly personalizes his speech, sweeping away before the 2022 World Cup criticism of human rights in Qatar by evoking his "discriminated" childhood as a little Italian in the Swiss Valais.

To develop football, this polyglot with a smooth head, partially installed in Doha with his Lebanese wife and their five children, does not lack ideas. In a world of football with complex balances, between leagues, rich and poor federations, clubs, confederations, players and supporters, many accuse him of moving forward in force. But his idea of a World Cup every two years, launched with fanfare in the fall of 2021, was buried the following spring in the face of the magnitude of the opposition.

(With AFP)

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