By Tony Attwood
- Arsenal in 2026/7. What is the transfer position going to be like this summer?
- No North London is NOT red! All London is red.
My mind wandering, and with no news coming out of Arsenal, a question came to my mind. I wondered how I could be assured that Fifa is a fair, reasonable and democratic organisation that does what its members want. And I hit on an article suggesting that Fifa was about to receive the biggest complaint ever about its finances, just as the World Cup finals get underway.
Which led me to ponder if I could show that Fifa is controlled by a set of laws and rules that I could examine, or if, being all-powerful and international, it can simply get on and do what it wants.
Put another way, I wondered if the members of Fifa did not like what Fifa is doing, were those members willing and able to protest against decisions they don’t like, or are they frightened that if they made some sort of objection, they might in some way be penalised in the future.
These are the sorts of questions I think should be asked of all organisations that I come across in my life, be it a parish council or a multinational affair like Fifa. And yet I am not sure I have ever seen such a question asked of Fifa, which immediately made me suspicious, because surely in relation to all organisations with worldwide power, accountability is something we should always be asking about.
So I tried to ask about Fifa and its finances by typing in the question into Google, “How do we know Fifa is spending its money properly?” The answer came back, “We know how FIFA spends its money through publicly disclosed documents, though whether it is spent ‘properly’ remains heavily debated. FIFA releases comprehensive, audited financial records, but critics argue that these funds are frequently misallocated or used to solidify political power.”
So basically, we don’t know, and there are suspicions. Which is not very reassuring given the amount of cash involved.
Now I also came across a protest group called FairSquare, which openly says, “Infantino isn’t fit to lead Fifa and Fifa isn’t fit to govern football. But to change it, we first have to expose and prove how unaccountable Fifa really is. Add your name to our complaint to Fifa’s Ethics Committee, demand that Infantino be investigated immediately.”
But the problem there is that this would be a part of Fifa investigating Fifa. So, for example, FairSquare alleged that Infantino was certainly not fulfilling his duty of neutrality when he awarded President Trump the first Fifa Peace Prize, but it turned out there was no one to whom the complaint could be made.
What FairSquare wants is to get lawmakers to investigate Fifa. But again, there is no obligation for the ethics committee to agree to such a move. In short, the Fifa constitution makes Infantino the world supremo who cannot be questioned. And besides, if you were getting worldwide first class travel, food, drinks, accommodation and the best seats in the stadia, would you blow the whistle – and risk having your country thrown out of all international competitions? Perhaps. But also perhaps not.
However, the Norwegian FA has agreed with FairSquare’s complaint, but no other associations backed them up. One is tempted to say, everyone knows a free lunch when it’s put on the table.
But issues keep arising, such as costs, human rights, safety… hence FairSquare with its Reboot campaign, which will submit to Fifa and which says that Infantino has repeatedly breached the Fifa code of ethics, by not remaining “politically neutral” by giving Trump the Fifa peace prize while his country was effectively at war in the Middle East and had just threatened to annex Greenland.
Of course, at or at least near the centre of all this is the fact that Fifa is massively rich, and it passes out money to its members with precious little oversight. Fifa denies this and says it is open in every regard and says that it has reformed itself in recent years following many years of outright corruption in the organisation, as well as pointing to the 800% increase in football development funding over the past ten years as a result of increased efficiency.
But many remain sceptical about Fifa’s president giving its top prize to the President of the United States just before a World Cup being held in the United States. Some might agree that something within the whole operation smells rather fishy.
