The Infantino Scandal That Led To Football Civil War - What Happens Next?

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2:11Hello and welcome to The Rest is Football. We've got a special episode for you today as we reach the first international break since the World Cup. In most previous seasons, there isn't a great deal that usually happens on the international front following a major tournament. Well, that certainly wasn't the case this year. Less than 10 days after the World Cup final news came out that Gianni Infantino had plans to sell stakes in the World Cup. A potentially huge change in the game we know and love that was met with widespread opposition. Joining me today to discuss this incredible story, the fallout from it, and what happens next is the man who actually broke the news, Martin Ziegler.

2:52Martin, welcome. Hi, Gary. Yeah, great to be with you. It was an incredible story, probably the biggest of my career, really. So what he was trying to do was sell off 20%, bring in$4.2 billion to FIFA's coffers. And then from that point onwards, obviously, those investors would take a share of any surpluses in perpetuity. So you'd have this sort of big cash inflow immediately. But then obviously, the amount of money that FIFA would earn would then have to be kind of shared out down the line. What would be in it for the 20 % investors into this? Because if I'm not mistaken, FIFA's a non-for-profit organization.

3:40Yes. So you'd have to set up this new company that was called FIFA Forward Enterprise, and they would take a 20 % stake in that. That would obviously generate surpluses. We saw the USA World Cup, incredible amounts of money. It's like 15 billion US dollars for the World Cup and USA, Canada, Mexico. And a lot of that is going to be surplus. So before any money gets shared out to all the FIFA member associations or goes into the reserves, obviously, a chunk of that would have had to go to the investors. And for them, it's a great... I mean, speaking to people in the financial markets, they said it was a no-brainer.

4:20It's such a good investment. You've got this monopoly, the biggest single sports event in the world. It sort of generates a huge amount of money all the time. You know, it's getting more and more popular, more and more commercialized. And people would be flocking, especially at the value that had been put on it, which some people thought it was undervalued. FIFA had undervalued it and make it even more attractive to investors. How did you get wind of what was going on in the first place? It was the week after the World Cup final. And I got a text message from a sort of trusted contact said, have you got a minute?

4:57And I said, yes, I rang him. And he said, I've got something to tell you, but I can't tell you what it is over the phone. I can't tell you on email. I don't want any email traces, WhatsApp traces, anything. You just have to meet you face to face. So I arranged to meet him several days later on the Monday. And I think when somebody tells you that they've got something to tell you, they don't want to put it on any traces. You start thinking, oh, this could be really, really significant. it was a little back in my mind I thought is there something sort of huge around the Balogun case that's what I was thinking it might be Presumably I know you can't say who it is but presumably it's someone either close to or inside FIFA I think it's fair to say somebody close to or inside FIFA with a lot of knowledge about what was going on and yeah so when I met them they sort of showed me a document which laid out the sort of the details of the sell-off scheme and the plan to bring in private investors, which my first thought, this is pretty major stuff.

5:59What did you think when you first heard about it? I mean, was it like a gut instinctive reaction? Because when you're a bit like close to it, I wasn't totally sure how people were going to react. What was your sort of immediate instinct? Well, I think if it had been the previous World Cup, I'd have been completely flabbergasted. flabbergasted but given what was going on during the world cup i wasn't and what had happened previously in the world cup you know obviously the peace prize for donald trump and various other antics and then during the world cup the balligan issue and the red card being rescinded not rescinded but his postponement being delayed until um down the line so i just thought you started to worry particularly.

6:43So I don't think I was completely flabbergasted, but I was still absolutely gobsmacked because I think all of us, we thought, well, hang on a minute, how can this work? It's not your game. It's not your business. You're running it. Football is the people's sport and FIFA's there to run it for us, not to try and sell it off for profit. So I think all of us were aghast. But I think the levels of surprise would diminish slightly by his antics going before the World Cup and during the World Cup. But even by some of those standards of which the absurdity of the decisions was obvious. And I think there was a degree of anger in a lot of people as well.

7:34I mean, even I, I haven't really got a temper, but I just thought, who are you to do this? Talk us through a little bit about how you go from learning about this story and then I presume, I mean, you have to probably really be very careful because I'm sure lawyers would have had to look at it to make sure that you're making all the right moves and saying all the right things because when you break a story like that, I presume you have to be pretty much absolutely assured that you're correct. You certainly needed, I needed like second sources to confirm various aspects of it. Initially, I started making calls.

8:14I mean, what became fairly obvious is that hardly anybody knew about it. Like FIFA council members didn't know about it. I was getting contacts from people. I wasn't, I wasn't sort of telling them exactly what I knew, but I was like asking them enough to, if they knew it, then they could, then we'd sort of progress the conversation. You know, I'd be like saying, have you heard anything about investments around the World Cup? And they said, no, no, no. What's this? I said, I'm not. It's something I've heard. I'm just looking into it. And then if the FIFA council members, effectively the board of directors of FIFA, they don't know about it.

8:50I mean, this is incredible. This very tight circle of people. How small do you think the circle of people that knew about it was? Or were actually told about it rather than found out? Yeah. And FIFA may be like five or six, perhaps. And Fantino's closest aides, presumably. Yeah. So a couple of his closest aides. And some people, I think, that he'd sort of detailed to work on it. But on a more junior level, obviously, there would be sort of following orders and kind of sworn to secrecy. The thing about it was, which did sort of open it up a bit, obviously, is that they'd had to sort of contact potential investors.

9:30Yeah. Mainly in the States. and that sort of opened up the sort of the doors, the confirmation. And then because I mean, the intriguing thing was this suggestion, which I hadn't been able to confirm initially, that Joshua Kushner, who is the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law, was being lined up as the lead investor. When I managed to get that confirmed from somebody in the United States and they they basically knew all about it. They said, oh, yeah, yeah. People in Kushner's or Josh Kushner's organization, they're like talking about, oh, yeah, we're going to buy FIFA. That's how we're talking about it.

10:06You would have thought it wouldn't be for sale, wouldn't you? I kind of realized it was a sort of natural progression. So it sort of struck me, you know, all these things. You mentioned some of them yourself, didn't you? Like hydration breaks. I mean, when the hydration breaks thing was announced in November and it was all, you know, player welfare, but we're going to have it in every match. and a lot of people said, this is just for the sort of TV thing. And people said, no, no, no, all our TV deals are already done. It's not going to add any value. But actually what it realized what it was doing was adding value for the investors.

10:40Look, we've got hydration rates in every match. So for the next World Cup, it's going to be there. And this is a great commercial opportunity for you. So all these things sort of kind of fell into place as well. And then it was then a matter of, you know, speaking to our lawyers, they were, they were happy with it. They just said that we had to give FIFA a bit of time to respond. And then we, yeah, then we hit the button. When you first went to them, obviously when you, when you're doing these stories, I've been a little bit of experience, usually on the receiving end. When a newspaper has some, or what they believe to be some kind of story and they'll come to you generally at the last minute and then asking for some kind of response.

11:22When they're not true, I just ignored them completely. And even when they were true, ignored them completely. So I just wonder what FIFA's initial response and who did you actually go to to kind of get the story verified or at least get their side of the story? Yes, I went to FIFA head of communications, tried a call, didn't get through, sent a WhatsApp message, and then sent an email to all the general media press office, explained what I wanted to put to them, had quite a few questions and said, I'm going to publish this afternoon, basically. But I was in the sort of back of my mind that what are they going to do?

12:03Because it's such a big thing. Are they just going to make a general announcement? Did you get a reply? Somebody else rung me up and said, we're going to give you a response. We are going to give a response later this afternoon. but I think we were a bit worried that they were just going to issue a press release generally so we after giving them what the lawyer said was a decent amount of time we published yeah. What was the immediate reaction when it broke as someone who's done that story and then suddenly it just goes like explodes? There's a sort of strange feeling that you feel a bit nervous.

12:36That you've got it right I was very confident I got it right but there's some sort of nerves in the back of your mind and then i thought it was a like a really big story and head of sport had come in off his holiday because he thought obviously it was a big thing and the editor did as well and so i was like intrigued to see how you know how it was going to respond um before i'd published i'd actually i'd said to because i wanted to get some reaction quickly so i'd actually i'd said to uefa i've got something coming i didn't tell me specific details about what it was um but you know you might be interested in reacting to it i think it might cause cause you some consternation so but i wasn't quite prepared for how it all took off i mean you know within a couple of hours he had andy burnham filming a video on his social media post.

13:31Let me say this very clearly. Football does not belong to investors. The World Cup is not a product. It is the greatest competition in the world and it was never anyone's to sell. And I think the fact it went so global there, there wasn't just a sort of UK story. You can understand why. I mean, this was something, I mean, it beg of belief really. And the whole thing with FIFA as well, it's supposedly a non-for-profit organisation. The money that they bring in is supposed to be for advancing the sport around the world. And I'm sure it does a lot of that but what what completely baffles me is is why why the greed why do you need billions and billions in in the bank because you're not going to realistically speak and go out and spend all that money around the world it doesn't it doesn't need to do that I mean it makes absolute fortunes from the world cup anyway without hydration breaks or without trying to sell some kind of investment to people.

14:26So it's very difficult to understand what's going on. Maybe it's just a sign of the times that everyone needs more money and more money and more money when ultimately they're supposed to be the custodians of our sport. That's a really good question, a really good point. You're right. They've got incredible – I think they've got$5 billion or$6 billion in their reserves. And then, you know, they don't need all that. But UEFA's got like a fraction of that. They've just made a huge amount of money, double the amount of money they made in Qatar they made from the last World Cup. So they've got all that as well.

15:02This money that Infantino promised was going to come from the sale to the investors, this extra cash, 40 million per 211 member associations that they would get instead of 10 million, they could pay that anyway. Of course they could. And sort of not notice it. So that was one of the things that actually my source had told me, that there was actually a personal element to this about Infantino that he is coming to the end of his presidency. He thought he was going to be elected unopposed in March and that he would, what would he do in 2031 when his term ends? And the idea is he would become the chief executive of FIFA Forward Enterprise, which would be a bit like the NFL commissioner.

15:49and the salary projected for that was$30 million a year before any bonus. FIFA did say that that hadn't been discussed. That's when I put it, and they said that hadn't been discussed. But my source was adamant that that was very much part of the plan. And, I mean, you're right, it makes sense. FIFA doesn't need a big influx of cash. So why are you having this big influx of cash? It doesn't really make sense. The only sense I can make of it, because they've got so much in there anyway, and people could say, well, maybe it's corruption they're taking out. Well, take that away. That's not necessarily the case, of course.

16:32But for me, I wonder whether Infantino judges success by the amount of money they have in the bank. I can't think, and he can tell people he's been the most successful president that FIFA's ever had, not that they've had many, and they all tend to let us down in the end, that's for sure. I remember it was around the draw for the World Cup in Russia that was made, I think, the end of 2017. After that draw which I hosted, Infantino was fairly new to the role and I was sat with Boban, who was helping him at the time, and we had a conversation and I thought, this guy's all right. And we were saying, Boban and myself, because we love our sport, we love our game more.

17:20And we were sitting having this conversation. We were going, Johnny, this is an opportunity to get everything straight after the debacle of the recent times at FIFA with the corruption, etc. I said, we need someone to rescue. And he was saying all the right things. I just don't know what happens to these people. It seems maybe because they're so powerful, because they've got obviously people reliant on them all around the world for the investments, whatever it is. And people, they're treated like, she's probably treated like a royal family visit wherever he goes because people know he's important because he's the guy who might deliver the money that we need, et cetera.

17:58And something must happen to their egos. I mean, that thing about power and egos, I mean, it's hard to explain, isn't it, really, what happens to people when they get these roles? When he was elected president in 2016, obviously we'd had all the sort of FIFA corruption scandal the year before that. And, you know, this great hope that this was going to be, you know, this going to come in and reform everything. But it changed so quickly because he spoke all, you know, he was on these sort of reform committees, did all these things. And then his first official trip, he went on EasyJet. But then within weeks, he was like flying private jets everywhere.

18:36Russia were putting on private jets for him to fly. He even flew to see the Pope on a private jet. And then all the reform talk, he sacked all the independent people who had been brought in after the Blatio era to try and change things and improve the governance, and he sacked all those. And then it was one thing after another. He tried to bring in private investment in 2018 to set up new tournaments. That got defeated, And then everything around the World Cup bidding and World Cup plans, it all seemed to be rewarding countries that had supported him, like Saudi Arabia, Morocco. They're kind of trying to get other countries to join with them so that they could be part of the World Cup bid.

19:22And he succeeded with Morocco and then organized things, really. So Saudi Arabia got it on their own. Let's take a little break here and when we come back we'll talk about more of the ramifications of all this.

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21:40Welcome back to The Rest is Football with Martin Ziegler and me, Gary Lineker, discussing all things FIFA at present. Martin, what is the current state of play in terms of Infantino? obviously he's going to still run in March next year. There is obviously, there's some people that are with him and a lot of people that are against him. What's the current state of play? I don't think we've seen a kind of civil war in football like this. I mean, there were things during Blatter's time when there was people challenging him and he faced elections from rivals, but I can never remember in the sort of 30 years almost that I've covered it that we've seen anything like this.

22:21So you've got UEFA lined up against him, got the presidents of CONCACAF and Asian Football Confederation against him. And then on the other side, you've got his supporters, mainly, I guess, in Africa and South America. And so you've got this incredible situation where he said he's going to run. We haven't had a candidate put up against him yet. I think they're trying to find some sort of unity candidate to do this. Any idea who that might be? There have been lots of suggestions put out. For example, Nasser Al-Khalifi, the Paris Saint-Germain president, head of European football clubs. Victor Montagliani, the CONCACAF president.

23:01Sheikh Salman, the Asian Football Confederation president. They've all been sort of suggested as possibilities, but none has sort of come out and said, yes, we want to do it. In fact, I mean, people close to Nasser Al-Khalifi have said, no, he's not interested in it. So that's still a lot of uncertainty around that. In the meantime, Gianni Infantino has been going on some global tours, trying to shore up his power base, which is, I think he's probably having a degree of success. It'll be interesting to know how much. Will he be making them promises, do you think? He'll be making them promises of what he's going to do for their federations in their various countries?

23:35I've reported a couple of things that he said he will support countries and confederations on. For example, that he will support Morocco to have the final of the 2030 World Cup instead of Madrid. FIFA say that no decisions are being made on that, but my sources are that he said he will support them, although it's not his decision, it's the FIFA Council's decision that he'll support them to do that, and also that he will support South America's efforts to expand the World Cup for 2030 from 48 to 64 teams, which is, I mean, a lot of people think that's a crazy idea, but it's something South America has been putting a lot of pressure on to do.

24:16So, I mean, that's a fascinating thing as well. So all those sorts of things, anything that can help him get votes, he will do. I think in terms of a 64 team World Cup, it would at least make the group stages clearer and fairer. That's the end of the game. And actually, the addition of countries, I think, was one of the success stories of the previous World Cup. But the enlargement of the World Cup, if it were only for the purest of reasons, then vote press, I understand. Yeah. What's UEFA's current state of play? Because at one point they were talking about pulling out of future World Cups. They're not backing him clearly.

24:52I mean, UEFA and FIFA, there's always been that rivalry, particularly in recent times anyway. What's the current situation there? There's a sort of boycott threat. They had this meeting about three days after the time has broke the story. Then all the European countries met and they said, we will boycott FIFA tournaments if this goes ahead. And then the next day FIFA withdrew it. So that was successful. But then they've sort of upped the states. They've launched sort of legal proceedings in the United States, demanding sort of disclosure of all the files and data and documents around the sell-off plan.

25:29And basically, he's saying they're preparing possible criminal proceedings against Infantino himself in Switzerland for criminal mismanagement, which is obviously up the stakes slightly. FIFA are going to fight this all the way. I mean, I think that's more like a tactic, because I mean nothing when we've seen the Swiss criminal cases I think the one against Blatter and Platini took about five years before it happens and nothing like that is going to happen I think it's a tactic to put pressure on Infantino to try and get him to resign but you know somebody who knows Infantino well told me when he faces this sort of thing he just he digs in he digs in his heels and even harder you know he's a very stubborn sort of person it's ludicrous that someone can be consistent president of FIFA I think it needs to be a little bit like maybe American presidents I think you can serve one term or it should be just a thing that goes around I think maybe one term one World Cup or even two but no more than that just because otherwise you're provoking this sort of behaviour if you get some kind of rogue guy at the top who loses his sense of decency When you sort of met him in 2018 Gary were you invited to be part of the FIFA Legends group?

26:41No This sort of group players know i've done one or two things for the fifa legends group but i'm not one of them i don't well i might be i don't know i've done one or two things quite quite a few years ago they sort of play five asides and things like it's not really my bag i can't really i don't i've retired for a reason i've never bothered since you know i'm quite interested in the politics and the politics of football as as well but don't like necessarily being involved in it so i made the decision quite a few years ago to not be associated with FIFA in any way, deliberately, because particularly with going into the fact that I'm in the media and sometimes, whether it was when I worked for the BBC or even now doing this show, I think it's better if you're not influenced from the inside.

27:27So I've kept my distance deliberately, I would say, probably since the turn of this decade. It was a deliberate ploy. having done the World Cup draw for them in 2018. And I remember they wanted me to meet Vladimir Putin. And I thought, I don't want to do that. And I just told him, I'm sorry, I've got so much to do with the script. I'm trying to get it already. And then I felt it was a slightly uncomfortable position. And I thought going down the line that it's probably better to distance myself. And I think it's probably proved. I was going to say. In hindsight. That's probably one of the best decisions of your career, not to have that handshake with Vladimir Putin.