Gianni Infantino is now the most powerful man in world football, after yesterday’s vote that saw hip pip a more fancied Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa to the FIFA presidency.
Born in Brig, a Swiss-German speaking Alpine town close to the border with Italy, he studied law at Fribourg University, then worked as the secretary general of the International Centre for Sports Studies at the University of Neuchâtel. He joined Uefa in 2000, worked his way carefully up to become director of the legal affairs and club licensing division in 2004, before becoming general secretary, effectively the chief executive, in 2009.
The Swiss-Italian football administrator was a common face of the UEFA events, having served as the association’s General Secretary since 2009.
Most football fans know him for his impressive language skills, as he is fluent in six languages; Italian, French, German, English, Spanish, and Arabic.
Infantino takes over from long serving president Sepp Blatter, though that position could have very well ended up in his former boss Michel Platini’s hands.
Platini, a former football great looked all set to take over the reins of the world governing body until he was slapped with an eight-year ban, now reduced to six years, from all football related activities for graft allegations.
Infantino, 45, is a Swiss lawyer and more of a career sports administrator than a committee clambering football politician. In his campaign, flying the equivalent air miles of five times round the globe to meet FIFA’s vote-wielders in person, Infantino has shown himself to be not just a technocrat, but shrewdly aware of football’s political heart: self-interest.
His slick manifesto promises all the correct themes: transparency, good governance, support for the reforms proposed as FIFA’s life raft from its sea of disgrace. But large dollar signs are – literally – at the centre of it. Highlighting the “very significant increase” in money he is promising to the voting football associations, two pages are devoted to spelling out the cash on the table. Each of FIFA’s football associations in 209 countries is promised $5m over four years, while the confederations – the six continental blocs including UEFA – will be paid $40m. There is another $4m regionally for youth tournaments and – personally very important to the delegates gathered in Zurich to vote – $1m for travel costs.
Infantino pointedly noted that he began his campaign in Cairo, Egypt, and ended it in Cape Town, South Africa. Africa’s 54 associations are grateful recipients of FIFA investment, and usually decisive in a FIFA vote.
