In recent decades the city of Salé, just across the river from Rabat on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, has undergone a remarkable transformation. At the start of this century it was a gritty working-class area, whose old town was still weathered enough to serve as a body double for the Somali capital Mogadishu in the film Black Hawk Down. But in recent decades, under the country’s autocratic government, the area has been transformed beyond measure, and largely beyond control.
The population has trebled in the space of 40 years. Slums have been cleared, often forcibly, to make way for grand megaprojects: a new tram system, luxury tourist spaces, a sparkling marina, a blue-chip business park called Technopolis, and – since last July – the African headquarters of Fifa. And in a way, this hub of disruption and avarice, unshakeable volition and rampant capitalism, feels like the perfect location from which a besieged warlord might choose to make his desperate last stand.
According to reports in the Times, Gianni Infantino has been “holed up” in Salé this week as he tries to save his presidency. Apparently Infantino’s aides have been feverishly calling Fifa Legends – the organisation’s paid ex-player ambassadors – to persuade them to offer Infantino their public support. On Wednesday one of them, Luís Figo, decided to break his silence. “Infantino must go,” he said, condemning his plan to sell off a stake in the World Cup to private investors as “the lowest, most deceitful and cravenly self-interested behaviour I have ever witnessed.” That’ll be a no, then.
Meanwhile, the leaders of Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation are massing forces at the gates. A “governance boycott”, in which members refuse to attend meetings or ratify Fifa decisions, is one idea. A rival World Cup-style competition – which would in effect translate to secession – is the nuclear option. And yes, in the moment this feels good, stirring, cathartic, karmic. We should all take a certain satisfaction in seeing Infantino get his long-deserved kicking. For all this, a pertinent question should also pose itself. Why now? And why like this?
It is, after all, almost eight years since Fifa first proposed selling off a slice of its commercial legacy. In 2018 Infantino agreed in principle a deal with the Japanese firm SoftBank – whose main financial backer just so happened to be the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia – for an expanded Club World Cup and global Nations League. The scheme eventually sputtered to a halt, but with virtually none of the screaming and apocalyptic threats seen over the past fortnight.
It is four years since the soiled, blood-soaked Qatar World Cup, and the “today I feel gay” speech that turned the sport’s most important administrator into a figure of ridicule. Two years since Saudi Arabia were handed the 2034 tournament in a bidding process no other country appeared to be prepared for. Three years since the Club World Cup was coerced into existence over a chorus of player welfare concerns. Two months since Omar Artan was summarily denied entry to a World Cup in which he was supposed to be refereeing. One month since Folarin Balogun had his suspension overturned in a supposedly independent process.
For the men and women who – as it turned out – held Infantino’s fate in their hands all along, none of this appeared to be a red line. For years the injustices, the indignities, the reputational and environmental damage, the ruptures to rules and structures, the stitch-ups and dead migrant workers, have been waved through by acclamation. And so it is worth wondering whether anything has materially changed here, beyond the fleeting opportunity for ambitious footballing executives to claim the keys to Infantino’s empire.
It is more than a decade since the late Lord Triesman, the former FA chair, described Fifa as a “mafia family”, and nothing about that description feels less true today. This is in many ways a supralegal body operating beyond the boundaries of conventional politics or economics, operating under its own rules and its own moral code, tied together not through popular consent but through a feudal system of tribute and protection, which changes not through legislation or overthrow but by occasional mob-style decapitation.
The moral objections to Infantino’s investment plan are manifest, but perhaps more striking still – for a president who has staked everything on his ability to drive revenue – is the economic illiteracy. One hand-picked buyer (Joshua Kushner), one made-up number ($20 billion) and an artificial countdown clock (19 September). Is this really how to fetch the best price for your asset? Or is it how you act when you want to secure a bigger piece of the largesse you have so selflessly created, but are statutorily bound to one more term in your current job?
And in hindsight, it seems clear that Infantino’s thirst for bending rules and breaking conventions was a kind of loyalty test, his Yakuza tattoo, a way of demonstrating to the billionaire investor class that he truly was one of them. No wonder his first instinct on finding himself cornered was reportedly to appeal to Donald Trump: his roof, his protection, his kindred spirit.
It is often said that Infantino is the symptom and Fifa is the disease. In fact Fifa too is the symptom; the disease is capitalistic fascism, a simple disdain for humanity, a belief that some are born to rule and others are bound to follow. And this is a cancer that will remain embedded in so many of our institutions long after Infantino has taken his last celebrity selfie, long after “45/47” has chowed down his last Oval Office Big Mac, long after the new Fifa regime has swept in through the door wearing the pageant sash of reform.
Football, the greatest mass pursuit ever invented, will of course endure. In a way its ingenuity, its ability to adapt and not be crushed by adaptation, is its beauty and its curse. Like the Salé skyline, it warps and shifts and grows and gentrifies and swells beyond recognition. This is still recognisably the same land, the same turf, upon which its ancestors once stood. But the old waterfront is gone for ever.
