Gianni Infantino’s tedious FIFA fairytale was all straw men and smoke bombs – The Athletic

Almost exactly one hour and just shy of 5,000 words after telling his audience that he has been “pretty quiet in the last few months”, FIFA president Gianni Infantino finished his opening remarks.

Given the fact that his eve-of-tournament media conference was only scheduled to last 45 minutes, this looked like a surprisingly early test of the crackdown on time-wasting that FIFA’s refereeing supremo Pierluigi Collina promised us on Friday.

Rest easy, sports fans, the board went up and we were granted the standard half an hour to ask a few questions of our own, you know, like a media conference.

But just as Qatar 2022 will be a World Cup of firsts, this was a media conference unlike any other, so it was very difficult to know which questions to ask.

Ordinarily, if the boss of world football’s governing body told 400 journalists he had been to North Korea to persuade them to co-host a Women’s World Cup with South Korea, or that Friday’s decision to scrap the sale of beer at stadiums was taken because of concerns about “the flow” of fans around this city state on congested matchdays and not because its royal family was annoyed with western journalists banging on about migrant workers, human rights and how Qatar won the vote to stage the tournament, we would definitely have asked him about that.

But when a 52-year-old, straight, white bloke from Switzerland starts the most self-absorbed rant since Hamlet cleared his throat with the most remarkable paragraph of quotes this football hack has ever transcribed, all normal news instincts go out of the window and you are left thinking maybe you should follow them.

“Today I have very strong feelings, I can tell you,” Infantino began. “Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker.”

Well, Gianni, as long as you asked for his permission first, I suppose it’s OK. But why do you think you know what it’s like to be in any of those shoes?

“I feel this because what I’ve been seeing and what I’ve been told — because I don’t read, otherwise I would be depressed — brings me back to my personal story,” he continued.

“I am a son of migrant workers. My parents were working very hard, in very difficult conditions, not in Qatar but in Switzerland. I remember very well, and I’m not 150 years old, I’m not speaking about Apartheid in South Africa (but) I remember where the migrant workers were working in Switzerland, how they lived, what rights they had.

“I remember as a child how migrant workers were treated when they wanted to enter the country and look for work, at the border. I know what happened with their passports, with their medical checks, with their accommodation.”

It was not great, he suggested, and neither was Doha when he first visited as the freshly elected boss of FIFA. So, he told the Qataris, “this is not good, this not right, and we need to do something about it”.

And do you know what, boys and girls? They did.

“And in the same way that Switzerland has become an example of inclusion and tolerance of nationalities working together, with rights, Qatar has made progress as well,” he said, before warning us “I will come back to that”.

“Of course, I’m not Qatari, I’m not Arab, I’m not African. I’m not gay, I’m not disabled, I’m not really a migrant worker,” he revealed. “But I feel like that because I know what it’s like to be discriminated against and bullied as a foreigner in a foreign country.

“As a child at school I was bullied because I had red hair and freckles. I was bullied, of course for that, I was bullied because I was Italian. I didn’t speak good German.

“So what do you do? Do you look yourself down and go to your room and cry? No, you try to make some friends, you speak, you engage, you get these friends to engage with others, and others, and others. You don’t start accusing, fighting and insulting.”

It was at this point that it dawned on us. In Infantino’s fairytale about how international football is not political (except all those times when he says it is), we’re the bad guys. But we’re not just bad, we are racists, we are hypocrites, we are ungrateful, we sow division, we are bad parents and we even spit on people, apparently.

On and on, he went.

He told us he was speaking for FIFA’s staff, the Qataris and 100,000 contractors and volunteers who will be looking after us and the 1.5 million visiting football fans for the next four weeks.

He told us the western media’s reporting of concerns about how Qatar has looked after the millions of migrant workers who have transformed this hot, dusty backwater into the richest country on the planet, on a per capita basis, amounted to “a moral lesson, or double moral lesson” we have no right to issue.

“For what we Europeans have been doing for the last 3,000 years around the world, we should be apologising for the next 3,000 years,” he said, borrowing an argument previously only delivered by dictators from Third World countries, who might have been making valid points if they had not also been making things worse by funnelling large amounts of their countries’ wealth into buying property in London and Paris.

From there, he attacked the hypocrisy of “western companies” who have come to Qatar and made “billions” without raising the subject of workers’ rights, unlike FIFA, of course, which is about to make billions from Qatar and has been dutifully raising the subject of workers’ rights for the past 12 years, while those workers have cracked on with building the infrastructure needed for FIFA’s month-long payday.

And then it was the turn of western governments, who never used to care about Qatar when all it had was sand and “some pearls in the sea” but now it has something they all want, liquified natural gas. He is right, of course, but is he right that only football, FIFA and Qatar care about migrant workers?

Don’t answer that now, because there is more that the west, and especially western journalists, do not care about it.

“I was at an event a few days ago to explain what we’re doing at this World Cup for disabled people — how many journalists are here?” he asked FIFA’s head of communications Bryan Swanson, who was sitting beside him.

“About 400,” comes the answer.

“At that event, there were probably four,” Infantino sniffed. “There are one billion disabled people in the world. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Fifteen per cent of the world’s population but nobody cares. Four journalists. You think they don’t suffer so we don’t have to care?

“Of course they do. Of course we have to help and do things for them, like we do with workers and LGBT people or anyone else who’s in any way suffering.”

But it is not just journalists who do not care about suffering. It is you, too. All of you, unless you work for FIFA or the Qatari government, it seems. That said, this journalist cannot find an invite to any World Cup-related disability programme launch or see anything about it on the FIFA website. Maybe we are just meant to follow him about on the off-chance?

Anyway, citing a report from Human Rights Watch (“one of these companies that has been criticising FIFA”), Infantino said Europe’s immigration policies were responsible for the death of 25,000 migrants since 2014, including 1,200 this year.

“Why has nobody asked for compensation for the families of these migrants?,” he asked, accusingly. “Maybe their life is not worth something?.”

Qatar, on the other hand, lets in hundreds of thousands of migrant workers, giving them legal status in the country and wages that are 10 times what they can earn at home.

Maybe Europe should take a leaf out of Qatar’s book, said Infantino, who has been a migrant worker in Qatar himself this past year, albeit one earning a slightly better salary than the newly-established minimum wage of $250 a month, or one who has to worry if his foreman will remember to let him sit in the shade for a few hours during those long summer months when temperatures top 45C (113F).

Why does nobody ever write about these measures and all the other examples of progress that Qatar has made in recent years, he asked a room full of people who have almost certainly mentioned those examples of progress in almost every piece they have written about Qatar’s migrant labour regime. Not that he would know, of course, he does not read what we write — it would only depress him.

And then, just to test us, he announced two new examples of progress and repackaged an existing one, presumably because listing three things is always better than two.

First, he revealed, he has been involved in discussions with the Qatari government and the International Labour Organization (ILO) about the opening of a “dedicated, permanent ILO office” in Doha that migrant workers will be able to visit to get expert advice on their employment rights. This is not quite a trade union, those are illegal in Qatar, and it is not quite the migrant workers’ centre that several trade unions, including the global footballers’ union FIFPro, have been calling for, but it could be pretty close.

For what it is worth, the last time this journalist was in Doha, he was one of a few journalists who did attend an event to draw attention to the need for better representation for migrant workers in this Gulf state. Most journalists, however, stayed downtown to write up Infantino’s latest speech.

Second — after a long preamble about FIFA not being reactive because being reactive is negative and he only does positive, and anyway, FIFA cannot tell sovereign countries what to do (as was perfectly demonstrated by his failure to keep Qatar to its commitment to let FIFA’s sponsor Budweiser sell its number one product as World Cup venues this month, as contractually and expensively agreed) — he talked about the compensation fund Qatar set up for workers in 2018.

Not the compensation fund that all the relevant charities and campaign groups are calling for — one to compensate the families of workers who die in Qatar — but one that deals with all the wages that migrant workers here frequently miss out on and also compensates those who suffer serious injuries in the workplace. This fund, he said, sounding suspiciously like someone who had been heavily briefed by the Qatari ministry of labour, has already paid out $350million in four years.

He added that he was certain the fund would pay out another $350million over the next four years, if it had to, which did not sound quite as impressive as he probably imagined it. No matter, if anyone is struggling to access this fund, let FIFA know, he said, and it would sort it.

“But that’s not the end of it,” he assured us, now sounding like the salesman of a car that has had a few careless owners.

Instead of limiting the usual World Cup legacy fund to projects in the host country, FIFA, with the assent of Qatar, is opening it up to anyone who wants to partner with it in financing education projects in the developing world, particularly for girls, and creating a “labour excellence hub” with the ILO to spread best practice in major-event construction projects around the planet.

There is still much to get through, so I am reluctant to break off from his monologue, but it feels like this is a good point to actually hear from some experts.

“Infantino’s comments were as crass as they were clumsy and suggest that the FIFA president is getting his talking points direct from the Qatari authorities,” said Nicholas McGeehan, a director of human rights consultancy FairSquare and an expert on migrant workers’ rights in the Middle East.

“Deflection and whataboutery have always been at the core of Qatar’s PR efforts to defend its rank failures, and now they have the FIFA president doing their work for them.”

Mustafa Qadri, chief executive of Equidem, a group that advocates for positive change in the global south, was even more scathing.

“History will not judge this moment kindly,” said Qadri. “Infantino’s speech was an insult to the thousands of hard-working women and men who have made the World Cup possible. He had a perfect opportunity to acknowledge that thousands from the poorest countries came to the richest only to face deception, exploitation and discrimination.

“There is a solution here: Infantino should establish a comprehensive compensation fund and demand Qatar establish an independent migrant workers’ centre so workers have a safe space to raise complaints and get the support they need.”

There is more, unfortunately. But I sense I might start losing you, just as Infantino lost the room within the first two minutes of his lecture.

On the issue of LGBT rights, he repeated the Qatari promises that all are welcome (providing you tone it down a bit) and made the point that homosexuality was also illegal when Switzerland hosted the World Cup. In 1954. So that’s OK, then.

The Swiss, by the way, are shockers, according to Infantino.

Have you heard the one about the last Swiss canton to give the vote to women? Well, we did. It happened in the ’90s, the 1990s, and only because the Swiss Supreme Court forced it on the misogynists of Appenzell Innerrhoden (population: 16,000).

The point, FIFA’s head boy was making, is that life is a journey: Switzerland has been on it, he’s been on it, we’re on it and so is Qatar.

“So, let’s look at ourselves in the mirror, see where we come from and try to convince the others by engaging,” he summed up, although there were still another 15 minutes to go.

“That’s the only thing I ask. Engage, help; don’t divide, try to unite. The world is divided enough. We’re organising a World Cup, not a war.

“Look at the city. It’s beautiful, they’re happy to celebrate, they were happy when the teams came but what do I read? These people shouldn’t cheer for England because they don’t look English, they look like Indians.

“What is that? Can somebody who looks Indian not cheer for England, or Spain, or Germany? It’s racism. This is pure racism.”

Yes, that is racism, and some of the reporting might have been influenced by racism, which is horrible.

But could it also have been a response to Qatar’s track record of bussing in “fans” to fill the seats at previous world championships in other sports its money has attracted? And was that not a reasonable response after it emerged recently that Qatar has been offering all-expenses-paid trips to the World Cup to fans from participating nations who promise to stick to football, cheer and keep an eye on any of their compatriots who might want to make a fuss about something or other?

There was no time for debate, though. Infantino had more examples of “new” FIFA’s munificence to share, his tireless pursuit of global peace, western hypocrisy, a story about how Qatar’s foreign minister got 160 female footballers out of Afghanistan for him only for the west to let him down again, a few teasers on how much money FIFA is going to make from this World Cup, which will delight its 211 member associations, which explains why they love him so much and want to hand him another four-year term as Daddy Warbucks next year.

But, finally, he had run out of straw men, sleights of hand and smoke bombs. 

“I hope I’ve given you enough information on these topics if you have to write something,” he said, generously.

“If you want to criticise anyone, don’t criticise the players, don’t put pressure on the coaches. Let them concentrate on football. Let them concentrate on making their fans happy.

“If you want to criticise someone, criticise me. Here I am. Crucify me, I’m here for that.”

And on that, the room mouthed “amen”.

But, then, with the sermon finished, there was a postscript.

Just before we all bolted for the door to start looking for hammers and nails, Swanson, who had sat patiently for his boss to get it all off his chest, decided to publicly confirm what many of us in the business have known for years: the much-respected former Sky Sports News presenter is gay.

So what? You might be wondering, and you would be right. But it was a dramatic moment, given the time and place.

But it also felt like we had just witnessed two men try to take one for the team — Infantino for Qatar, and Swanson for Infantino — but only one of them had done so with any sincerity or real courage.

(Main graphic — photos: Getty Images/design: Sam Richardson)

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