Paul Nicholson

August 5 – In the same week that Donald Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino and successfully lobbied for the reversal of a red card against US striker Folarin Balogun, his administration’s financial regulator ordered a prediction market platform to defy a state court order blocking its sports contracts. The proximity of those two events is not coincidental. It maps the full shape of a conflict that the World Cup put in the spotlight and that will not go away now that the tournament is over. Read more …

August 5 – FIFA president Gianni Infantino has underpinned his overwhelming power over the organisation with the knowledge that the African confederation (CAF) and its 54 member associations were under his absolute control. That has been demonstrated again by his sudden summoning of senior staff for crisis meetings to Rabat, the headquarters of the Moroccan FA and its president Fouzi Lekjaa. Why Rabat? Why not Zurich where FIFA is headquartered? FIFA is currently under the restraint of being unable to carry out a good chunk of its daily business due to the refusal of the AFC, Read more …

August 5 – Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, the Jordan FA president, has accused FIFA president Gianni Infantino of blackmail over withholding prize money from the FIFA Arab Cup. In a scathing statement, Ali, once a FIFA vice president who ran for the organisation’s presidency against Infantino in 2016, said that his federation had not yet received the prize money for reaching the final of the tournament, staged by FIFA in Qatar last year. Read more …

August 5 – Colo Colo have secured special permission for Cape Verde goalkeeper Vozinha to wear his famous nickname on the back of his shirt, in a move persuaded by the commercial spotlight the veteran has been placed under following his breakout performances at this summer’s FIFA World Cup. The Chilean Football Federation (ANFP) has granted the club an exemption from league regulations, which ordinarily require players to use their legal names rather than nicknames on playing shirts. Read more …

August 5 – FIFA’s chief of global football development Arsene Wenger has publicly distanced himself from Gianni Infantino’s abandoned FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal, describing the decision to scrap the plan as “absolutely necessary and beyond question”. In his first public comments since the FFE news broke last week, Wenger stressed he had no involvement in the project and only became aware of it through media reports. The statement adds another high-profile FIFA employee voice to the growing criticism of a plan that has triggered the biggest governance crisis of Infantino’s presidency – Read more …

August 5 – In one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history, a Saudi-led group has completed a $55 billion purchase of gaming giant Electronic Arts (EA). The group of buyers include Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (93.4%) and Affinity Partners ($1.1%) which includes Jared Kushner, US president Donald Trump’s son-in-law. His brother Joshua Kushner was involved in Gianni Infantino’s failed plans to sell off a minority stake in the World Cup. “EA has created stories, Read more …

August 6 – Just as FIFA president Gianni Infantino was unilaterally offering the World Cup final in 2030 to Morrocco, a document was leaked that shows Infantino was deeply embedded in the disastrous discussions around the European Super League proposal. That Infantino was involved is not a major surprise as there was always the suspicion that he was the ‘WO1’ person supporting the proposal and referred to in other documentation. What is a major surprise is how deeply he was involved in a proposal that would have changed the face of the European game. Read more …

Everything is said and done. One would have thought. But it isn’t. Not until the worst FIFA president of all time has disappeared into the abyss of Trump World or a similar sewer. Infantino’s most recent power-grab attempt remained exactly that: an eventually futile exercise in self-enrichment under the guise of doing something phenomenally, well, stupid, if you want to be kind. But he was found out in time. Read more …

August 6 – The Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA) has called on FIFA to undertake an independent review of its governance and decision-making processes. At an Extraordinary Leadership Meeting called to discuss the governance crisis surrounding FIFA and its wider implications for football and Sport, attendees addressed the questions raised concerning institutional accountability, transparency, consultation and trust. SIGA said that FIFA should “voluntarily undertake an independent review of its governance and decision-making processes as a demonstration of its commitment to the highest standards of governance, Read more …

August 6 – The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has, not surprisingly, come down unequivocably in favour of supporting FIFA president Gianni Infantino in his self-inflicted crisis moment, created by his voracious desire to sell off FIFA’s commercial and competition organising rights to a private equity investor. A statement issued following a CAF executive committee meeting held yesterday said that the committee “unanimously endorses the ‘Joint Update’ by the FIFA President and Secretary General on the FIFA Forward Enterprise and will continue to focus on making African Football amongst the best in the world and adhering to governance and transparency global best practices.” ‘Governance’ and ‘transparency’ are two words that have different interpretations in a confederation that for the most part has lost its self-determination under Patrice Motsepe’s presidency, Read more …