“All sor­rows are less with bread.”

—Miguel de Cer­vantes Saave­dra (Span­ish nov­el­ist, po­et, and play­wright (1547-1616)

Some of the best bread FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no has ever tast­ed is Saint Lu­cia’s fa­mous Thoma­zo bread. Or so it was re­port­ed in St Lu­cia Times News last week. Dur­ing a vis­it to the is­land, In­fan­ti­no ap­par­ent­ly asked his con­voy to make a stop at a pop­u­lar bak­ery to get some. Greedy Gi­an­ni has been on a tear through the Caribbean in the last two months, vis­it­ing sev­er­al coun­tries (An­tigua, Aru­ba, British Vir­gin Is­lands, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Grena­da, Guyana, Ja­maica, St Kitts, St Lu­cia) as he ce­ments his con­tro­ver­sial can­di­da­cy ahead of FI­FA’s March 2027 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. On his pil­grim­age, he has dis­trib­uted a bag of good­ies, in­au­gu­rat­ing FI­FA-fi­nanced in­fra­struc­ture and promis­ing tens of mil­lions to as­so­ci­a­tions for na­tion­al projects. Bread begets bread.

Af­ter ear­ly in­di­ca­tions from point men in Ja­maican and Trinidad and To­ba­go foot­ball, the Caribbean Foot­ball Union (CFU) is­sued a state­ment last week reaf­firm­ing its “col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing re­gion­al uni­ty, ad­vanc­ing foot­ball de­vel­op­ment and build­ing up­on the progress achieved through­out the Caribbean”. It con­tin­ued, “Fol­low­ing a for­mal con­sul­ta­tion and ap­proval process in­volv­ing its Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions, the 25 CFU Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions that are af­fil­i­at­ed with FI­FA ex­pressed col­lec­tive sup­port for the re-elec­tion of Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no as FI­FA Pres­i­dent in the up­com­ing 2027 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.” I am shocked! Not.

Give them bread

and cir­cus­es

Ju­ve­nal, the late first and ear­ly sec­ond cen­tu­ry AD Ro­man po­et, wrote “Give them bread and cir­cus­es”—an ad­vice to his im­pe­r­i­al em­per­or to se­cure pub­lic ap­proval, not by ex­cel­lence in pub­lic ser­vice or pub­lic pol­i­cy, but by di­ver­sion, dis­trac­tion, and by sat­is­fy­ing the most base re­quire­ments of the mass­es. As I said weeks ago, Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent Vic­tor Mon­tagliani now looks like a chump. While he walked a tightrope and nev­er ex­plic­it­ly called for In­fan­ti­no’s re­place­ment, he spear­head­ed the nom­i­nal coali­tion of FI­FA con­fed­er­a­tions (Con­ca­caf, UE­FA, and the AFC) that se­vere­ly crit­i­cised In­fan­ti­no’s gov­er­nance and con­tro­ver­sial com­mer­cial pro­pos­als. Egged on by UE­FA, he was glob­al­ly tout­ed as a po­ten­tial can­di­date for the Pres­i­den­cy in the 2027 elec­tion. But he re­cent­ly smelled the CFU rat and an­nounced his in­ten­tion to re­strict him­self to Con­ca­caf. In its state­ment, CFU stat­ed it “recog­nis­es the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing that the next de­vel­op­ment cy­cle de­liv­ers sus­tain­able ben­e­fits for its Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions. With the prospect of in­creased re­sources and con­tin­ued sup­port, the CFU re­mains fo­cused on strength­en­ing its ca­pac­i­ty, en­hanc­ing re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion and en­sur­ing that foot­ball de­vel­op­ment re­mains at the cen­tre of its pri­or­i­ties.” Al­low me to trans­late that for you: “CFU will stay with the mon­ey while oth­ers de­bate ethics and law be­cause we are all broke and need the bread”.

Mark, you, this is THEIR mon­ey —not In­fan­ti­no’s. It is part of FI­FA’s fi­nanc­ing pro­gramme, and they would re­ceive it un­der ANY pres­i­dent. In­deed, it’s not even In­fan­ti­no’s idea. FI­FA de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes were ini­ti­at­ed un­der FI­FA Pres­i­dent João Have­lange in 1975. Sepp Blat­ter in­tro­duced the FI­FA GOAL Pro­gramme in 1999. I head­ed the first of­fice es­tab­lished glob­al­ly un­der that pro­gramme —in Con­ca­caf. Yet they choose loy­al­ty to a man who has op­er­at­ed in the most uni­lat­er­al man­ner to pro­pose and ef­fect dodgy deals. Re­port­ed­ly, In­fan­ti­no even in­struct­ed a po­lit­i­cal­ly con­nect­ed Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion ad­vis­er to help se­cure a US work per­mit for his un­doc­u­ment­ed Nicaraguan house­keep­er.

UE­FA, os­ten­si­bly the leader of the charge against In­fan­ti­no, still (at the time of writ­ing) has not nom­i­nat­ed a can­di­date to op­pose him. Re­port­ed­ly, they have thrown their tac­it sup­port be­hind Japan FA Hon­orary pres­i­dent Ko­hzo Tashima af­ter di­rect dis­cus­sions at last week’s Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion (AFC) Con­gress. Tashima needs nom­i­na­tions from five na­tion­al as­so­ci­a­tions by No­vem­ber 18, but clear­ly he is play­ing a los­ing hand when AFC pres­i­dent Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khal­i­fa says to In­fan­ti­no at the same meet­ing, “I think that we reaf­firm our full com­mit­ment, of course, to sup­port­ing you and your lead­er­ship as you seek a new man­date as FI­FA pres­i­dent”.

Give him that, In­fan­ti­no has a gift for “get­ting down” with Caribbean and African foot­ball lead­ers. He has al­so vis­it­ed Africa (and Asia) sev­er­al times since Au­gust. He un­der­stands them, how to con­nect on a so­cial and emo­tion­al lev­el—a tremen­dous po­lit­i­cal skill he shares with Sepp Blat­ter, but one the UE­FA peo­ple sore­ly lack. And he grants them broad lat­i­tude to prac­tice “cre­ative man­age­ment and ac­count­ing”. UE­FA and Con­ca­caf col­lab­o­rate across a range of ar­eas, fo­cus­ing on knowl­edge ex­change and the cre­ation of de­vel­op­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties for play­ers, coach­es, match of­fi­cials and ad­min­is­tra­tors. The Chris­t­ian ad­mo­ni­tion that “Man shall not live by bread alone” may ap­ply to Caribbean foot­ball, but men want their bread first. TTFA cur­rent­ly re­ceives al­most TT$9 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly from FI­FA. Where does this go? Have we seen val­ue for mon­ey? Has it reached the child in Bonasse, Cas­tara or To­co? Has it been ac­count­ed for? And In­fan­ti­no has promised to in­crease an­nu­al fund­ing to TT$35 mil­lion. That is a lot of bread for the TTFA elite to keep track of.

UE­FA fail­ures

I re­mem­ber the hope­less 1998 cam­paign of Lennart Jo­hans­son, pres­i­dent of the Swedish FA, who op­posed Sepp Blat­ter in the 1998 elec­tion, los­ing by a vote of 111 to 80. Jo­hans­son had care­less­ly com­mit­ted po­lit­i­cal sui­cide af­ter a 1996 meet­ing in South Africa, say­ing, “When I ar­rived in South Africa, the whole room was full of black­ies, and it gets damned dark when they’re sit­ting there to­geth­er”. He al­so said, black ath­letes are on­ly suit­ed to ‘run, jump, fight.” Los­ing hand. In 2002, UE­FA fa­tal­ly backed Africa’s Is­sa Hay­a­tou’s cam­paign to try and oust Blat­ter—the kiss of death and an­oth­er los­ing hand. Hay­a­tou was buried with­out a trace, 139 to 56. Since then, no Eu­ro­pean has pre­sent­ed a se­ri­ous chal­lenge for the FI­FA pres­i­den­cy. Oth­er than In­fan­ti­no, of course. To­day, af­ter all its an­ti-In­fan­ti­no blus­ter and threats to de­part FI­FA, UE­FA can­not de­liv­er an elec­tion op­po­nent.

In Feb­ru­ary 2020, UE­FA pres­i­dent Alek­sander Ce­ferin was a mem­ber of the FI­FA Bu­reau that sus­pend­ed TTFA af­ter William Wal­lace and Unit­ed TTFA, of which I was a mem­ber, eject­ed the David John-Williams ad­min­is­tra­tion. We won the No­vem­ber 2019 elec­tion by op­pos­ing DJW’s au­to­crat­ic rule and fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment. I per­son­al­ly re­vealed the abuse of FI­FA funds, which FI­FA failed to ac­knowl­edge. Rather than co­op­er­ate with us, FI­FA chose in­va­sion and oc­cu­pa­tion un­der the Robert Hadad-led Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, which stag­nat­ed the As­so­ci­a­tion for four years. But Unit­ed TTFA fought back. We ap­pealed di­rect­ly to Ce­ferin (and Pres­i­dents of all FI­FA mem­bers), say­ing, “We have writ­ten sev­en times to FI­FA seek­ing me­di­a­tion of this mat­ter, with­out suc­cess. We have al­ways been pre­pared to work with FI­FA to re­solve TTFA’s fi­nan­cial is­sues, but FI­FA must recog­nise the As­so­ci­a­tion’s elect­ed of­fi­cers. We view FI­FA’s ac­tion as un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, un­time­ly and op­pres­sive, giv­en the fact that the new­ly elect­ed ad­min­is­tra­tion had held of­fice for less than four months.” Ce­ferin (and all the pres­i­dents, in­clud­ing those of CFU mem­bers) ig­nored us. Had they stood with us against In­fan­ti­no’s un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic rule then, maybe UE­FA would not have to fight to­day. And with­out the no­to­ri­ous Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee, to­day’s opaque, use­less TTFA lead­er­ship would nev­er have been spawned.

In the mean­time, CFU has is­sued a call for trans­paren­cy, stat­ing, “CFU con­tin­ues to call for in­creased trans­paren­cy, good gov­er­nance, and mean­ing­ful re­form with­in the foot­ball fam­i­ly. The CFU of­fers its sup­port with the ex­pec­ta­tion that FI­FA will con­tin­ue to strength­en ac­count­abil­i­ty, up­hold the high­est stan­dards of gov­er­nance, and pur­sue the re­forms nec­es­sary to en­sure that every Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tion is fair­ly rep­re­sent­ed and served”. Giv­en all that has tran­spired in full view of the glob­al pub­lic, this is breath­tak­ing­ly cyn­i­cal. Nom­i­na­tion day, No­vem­ber 18, ap­proach­es and I am re­mind­ed of the Amer­i­can co­me­di­an Will Rogers’ words: “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the gov­ern­ment and re­port the facts”.