Ian Hart: Football’s fragmenting before our eyes – but will Infantino be ousted?
“Bring back Sepp Blatter!” That’s probably a sentence you never thought you’d see in print.
Perhaps a return of the much maligned Swiss former world football administrator is probably taking it a bit too far, but on a serious note, world football, namely FIFA, and the game in general, somehow find themselves at a crossroads. A crossroads that could ultimately define the whole future of the game globally. Blatter’s replacement Gianni Infantino, the man entrusted to clean up The Beautiful Game, has on the face of it done anything but.
There were plenty of serious questions over the recent finals in USA, Canada and Mexico, and there are plenty more over Saudi Arabia being awarded the finals in 2034. But that’s eight years away, and if things carry on as they are, what kind of the a tournament will the Arabs even host? The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. If giving Donald Trump a peace prize wasn’t bad enough, then he effectively tried to sell off the World Cup to the highest bidder.
And while he’s U-turned on that, the dissent within the ranks of various global football federations, including UEFA, is reaching a point that if they don’t manage to oust him via a democratic election next March, football is in danger of fragmenting, similar to how the sport of boxing did in 1970s and 80s.
If he stays, a number of football federations and the countries they represent might end up running their own tournaments. It’s conceivable if the situation worsens we could end like darts did a few years ago, and have two world championships.
It’s the Women’s Under 20 world tournament in Poland in less than a month that could provide the first acid test.
As a result of Infantino’s recent actions UEFA are threatening a boycott, starting with that event in Poland, but almost immediately the French have said they won’t support any such boycott, while the FA are yet to confirm if the Lionesses will travel .
Fragmentation right before our eyes. So clearly urgent action is required before it’s too late…
And finally despite all these worrying shenanigans going on at the highest level of the game, we’ve still got our humour, none more so than our ‘friends’ in red and blue up the M23.
Last week mid-morning talkSPORT presenter Alex Crook was asking ‘How close are Brighton to a trophy?’ To which a Crystal Palace wag phoned in and said ‘47 miles’. Even I had to laugh...