This week, the head of FIFA announced plans to invite private investors to take a stake in FIFA. The continental football federations were promised huge cash bungs if they fell into line. I've not read the details of the proposal, but to be quite honest, I don't need to. The only reason that private investors ever invest in anything is to make a tidy profit, usually in the shortest time possible.
Football has always been a very two edged sword. On the one hand, there are the fans. If you love football and support a team, it is a stronger bond than most marriages. I am always vaguely suspicious of anyone who changes their allegiance after the age of 8. We pick our team and we stick with them. We spend a small fortune on a Sky subscription, and another small fortune on season tickets, if we support a Premiership team and go to games. We pay about ten times the price for replica tops, of a similar unbranded garment. If we have kids who love football, it is prohibitively expensive for families on low incomes. The clubs have three kits, which change every year, to feed the profits in. If you kid is a Man Utd fan, you'll be paying £60 for a home team top. It's the same for a City top. I suppose that at least City fans know that the cash is going into the team and not the pocket of the Glazers, but the products are priced to be as expensive as possible without being unaffordable to the main fan base. On the other side were the business interests around the clubs and the game. The only consideration they have for the fans, is to ensure they keep spending money.
Now when Infantino talks about bringing investment into the game, he is talking about bringing in people who want to squeeze every last penny out of the image rights of teams and the branding of the game. The game is global, so there is huge reach. I am sure that when he talks about 'cash for the development of the game', he's not talking about a magic pill that gives us all the ball skills of Messi. He is talking about finding new ways to squeeze more money out of the fans.
Infantino claims he has just organised the 'most successful World Cup ever'. In terms of pure cash, he is probably on the button. However it was not the best in terms of football on the pitch. It was not the best in terms of sportsmanship. It was not the best in terms of accessibility for fans. He clearly wanted an Argentinian victory, with Messi scoring the winner. During the knockout stages, Argentina seemingly had a free pass to kick the other team off the pitch. I believe this actually scuppered Argentina. Every time they had to chase the game and stop kicking the opposition, they were brilliant. They had arguably the greatest footballer of the modern era making his swansong, and somehow managed to alienate the whole planet. I am 100% sure that Infantino was dreaming of the commercial rights to the TV footage of Messi scoring a wonder goal to win the final.
As it was, it was Spain, a team without superstars who won. It was Rodri, a defensive midfielder who goes about his business in an unfussy way who was the player of the tournament. But Infantino used the time in the US well, to make the contacts in their sports world to sow the seeds for his scheme. The US sporting industry are the masters at squeezing value out of sport. The Man Utd model is perhaps the best example. Borrow the money to buy the worlds most glamorous club team. Squeeze the fans for every last sheckle, to pay the interest off and make sure there is a big dollop of cash on top to ensure your wallet is fat enough. In the Glazer model, success on the field only matters in terms of ensuring the cash keeps rolling in. You don't need the best players and managers, who may win things, just do enough to keep the fans believing and having hope.
A privatisation of FIFA will be different though. It is not the team or their fans that are being fleeced, it is the whole game. Tournaments will go to the highest bidder. 'Innovations' like hydration breaks and half time shows, which generate hard cash from TV advertising will become the norm. Game times will change for TV schedules. I expect all manner of commercial deals, so if you want a ticket for the final, you fly first class with the 'partner airline' to get points to get a ticket. I am not saying that getting tickets for World Cup finals has ever been easy or cheap, but it will become impossible for fans who are not minted.
I believe that hydration breaks are just the thin end of the wedge. It will not have escaped the attention of the money men that the final was largely a rather dull, turgid affair, with a lot of fouls. Argentina had zero shots on target. The difficult truth for the likes of Infantino is that this is not the sort of game that lucrative US audiences are interested in. They prefer games like Englands 6-4 defeat of France. They like the images at the end, where English and French players pray together and laugh and smile. The scuffles at the end of the final, are not what parents want their kids to see and for many it was a terrible end.
For a football fan like me, I do not want to see my players hugging opposition players at the final whistle. I want to see that they care. Of course Argentina went way over the top and entered the realm of bad losers, but I never want football to be a pantomime where no one cares. However when things get commercialised, they get sanitised. I suspect that for the likes of Infantino, the perfect game would be where Argentina had won 7-3, Messi had scored a hattrick and both teams had hugged and smiled at each other during the hydration breaks and at the end. All of the fans would have flown from around the world, first class, at a premium on FIFA packages, all would have bought the official "I was at the FIFA world cup final merch", all would have drunk the beer of the official FIFA world cup partner, everyone who posted clips on Twitter, of match incidents would pay FIFA for a license and at the end The King would give the FIFA board peerages and Donald Trump would give them all a pardon for any naughtiness that may have ensued and the Pope would make them all Saints.
I believe all of this undermines the game at grassroots. When I was a kid, in the summer, a gang of kids would go to the park, put down jumpers and play for the love of it. I don't see that anymore. Now kids log onto their mobile phones and watch memes of Ronaldo and Messi doing tricks ( and someone, somewhere makes a bob or two). We never had to worry about who's side the fat kid was on, because there weren't any. When a sport, which is supposed to promote health, has sponsors that sell sugar filled drinks, is it any surprise, it has lost its soul.
It will surprise no regular readers to learn all of this has inspired me to put pen to paper and write a song.
I'll be at Hadley FC tonight, watching a pre season friendly. It is a world away from the shenanigans at the top
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