- Fifa teeters on the edge; punishment is not agreed; Infantino wants football cut in two.
- Man City oppose Leagyue
By Tony Attwood
So let’s imagine that you wanted to run a World Cup football event that made a lot of money. Maybe you had a few ideas up your sleeve about how the whole thing could work, including ways of making sure that the very biggest countries could get some extra games in the largest of stadia.
Having got that basic grid in your mind, perhaps you might talk to a few of those very big footballing nations on an informal basis and explore everyone’s thoughts, listening out for prejudices, and “no can do” scenarios, as well as mutterings of “that sounds interesting” and so on.
Then you might get a little team together made up of people from various countries who are willing to pitch in more ideas, and after that come out with a plan that everyone could discuss. It is going to be a bit radical, you know, so you take it easy and let things emerge step by step.
There is no guarantee that this could work, but it would have the great advantage that you would be able to pick up on the negative mutterings early on, listening out for the “I’m not sure we could go along with that” and so forth. Maybe your ideas would have to change a bit to accommodate everyone, but well, that’s what we all do. Isn’t it? Some ideas would be bonkers and would go, but you might find one or two good thoughts along the way.
Except apparently we don’t. If we are so utterly convinced of the brilliance of our own ideas, and so certain that everyone is just like you (which means totally overwhelmed by the notion of money, more money and then even more money), you might not. You might just assume that the offering of money to everyone would get everyone onside.
In fact, you would be doing a Fifa.
That Uefa pulled the plug on Fifa is a wonderful reassurance that not everyone in the world of international football is totally transfixed by the idea of money, money and money. Maybe some of them do think about the heritage of the game, and the need to accommodate somehow the smaller countries who know they are going to be knocked out at the start, but still valiantly turn up every time because they are part of the show.
So for once, this week, the people who really think and really care have won. Which just leaves the question – what do we do with the idiots who tried to push through their new vision of football?
Obviously the most important thing is to identify everyone who supported the Fifa vision of the future and get them out of the game – and do it fast. Maybe they can find another sport to screw up, like basketweaving. But that is up to them – and up to the protectors of that activity to look after themselves. And it shouldn’t be too hard since they now have a model on which to work. It is called “just say no”. It is simple, and you may have heard of it before.
Some ideas – like having a World Cup for all the nations of the world, really are quite neat and worth preserving. Some people, like Infantino and his mates, really are worth throwing into a muddy pool and then having pebbles thrown at them every time they come up for air, for, oh I don’t know, ten years?
But here’s the big point: the power has just moved. It has left the “We know everything we can do anything,” gang who actually know nothing about why we love football and why we value it. It has returned to the people who understand that although football is a game built on traditions that we value and hold to be important.
Of course it is not perfect – nothing ever is. But it is muddling its way along, changing as it has to, amending, adjusting, and sorting itself out. It is not there to be knocked aside by some bunch of turnips who come along and say “Hey, we could make a lot of money out of this.”
The next step must be to dispose of Fifa, and build a new set of institutions that appreciate the traditions and know how to look after the game. When we have that, and maybe when that idea has settled in for 50 years or so, we could think about letting people like Infantino and Trump come along and watch a few games from the cheap seats. Just so they get a feel for it all. They will have passed away by then, of course, but we could put dummies in their places. After all, no one will notice the difference.
