There I was, dri­ving some­where re­cent­ly, when a ra­dio DJ dis­cussing the po­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in FI­FA made a bold state­ment: “This is the end of In­fan­ti­no.” To my­self, I said, “Broth­er, you have it all wrong. Greedy Gi­an­ni is go­ing nowhere.” Yes. And I will tell you why.

In my ar­ti­cle “Oh, What a tan­gled web we weave” (14/08/2026), I wrote: “No­tably, Mex­i­co has bro­ken ranks with Con­ca­caf to re­main in his cor­ner... and pres­sure is sure­ly be­ing ex­ert­ed on oth­er Con­ca­caf mem­bers to ral­ly to his ban­ner.”

Well, since that time An­tigua/Bar­bu­da, Grena­da, Ja­maica, and St Lu­cia have all kissed In­fan­ti­no’s ring. More Caribbean as­so­ci­a­tions will fol­low, rest as­sured. I may be boor­ish, but I told you so.

Look, it is sim­ple. Caribbean foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tions, which are cash-strapped and de­pen­dent on op­er­a­tional, de­vel­op­ment and in­fra­struc­ture fi­nanc­ing from FI­FA, have al­ways sup­port­ed who­ev­er sits on the throne in Zurich. The king holds the keys to the trea­sury — from Have­lange to Blat­ter to In­fan­ti­no him­self. And the Caribbean nev­er bites the hand that feeds it. Well, al­most nev­er, be­cause it was the Ba­hamas FA, af­ter all, that played the key role as pri­ma­ry whistle­blow­er in ex­pos­ing what came to be called “the Con­ca­caf/FI­FA cash-for-votes bribery scan­dal”, which ul­ti­mate­ly re­sult­ed in the demise of Sepp Blat­ter (and Jack Warn­er), lead­ing to the rise of Greedy Gi­an­ni.

The foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tions of Bermu­da, the Cay­man Is­lands, and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands — British colonies an­swer­able to Lon­don — sup­port­ed the Ba­hamas. The rest of the Caribbean held their ground. Re­cent­ly, Ja­maica Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Michael Rick­etts said it all: “UE­FA prob­a­bly have as much mon­ey as FI­FA does, so they can do and say any­thing. I can’t do that be­cause I need sup­port, and FI­FA has sup­port­ed us, and I’ll be very un­grate­ful not to show...some re­spect and say thanks to a man that has sup­port­ed Caribbean foot­ball.”

That, friends, is FI­FA’s pa­tron­age sys­tem. Moral­i­ty be damned.

A scan of FI­FA’s glob­al elec­toral game leads me to one in­escapable con­clu­sion - In­fan­ti­no will sur­vive. Look at it: FI­FA has 211 mem­bers. Africa has 54 and South Amer­i­ca has 10 — votes that have al­ready been pledged to In­fan­ti­no and which will be de­liv­ered. The Caribbean has 25 (of Con­ca­caf ‘s 35). Win those, along with al­ready pledged Mex­i­co, and Greedy Gi­an­ni is at 90 votes. He needs 106 to cling to of­fice. He will eas­i­ly se­cure the re­main­ing 16 votes in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, Asia, and Ocea­nia.

Con­ca­caf pres­i­dent, Vic­tor Mon­tagliani, a leader of the an­ti-In­fan­ti­no camp, is walk­ing in a mine­field. To shore up his po­si­tion in the Caribbean, In­fan­ti­no has ap­point­ed for­mer Switzer­land mid­field­er Gel­son Fer­nan­des, an In­fan­ti­no loy­al­ist, as the Di­rec­tor of Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions for the Caribbean, in ad­di­tion to his po­si­tion look­ing af­ter FI­FA’s African mem­bers. This move car­ries more than a hint of racism — it has no le­git­i­mate ra­tio­nale - not ge­o­graph­i­cal prox­im­i­ty, not par­i­ty in FI­FA’s rank­ings. One could ar­gue that this is on­ly be­cause Caribbean as­so­ci­a­tions are based on the African di­as­po­ra. But, in fact, it is a very savvy po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vre.

FI­FA’s Mem­ber As­so­ci­a­tions de­part­ment im­ple­ments the FI­FA For­ward De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, which funds lo­cal in­fra­struc­ture, grass­roots and na­tion­al team projects. In­fan­ti­no’s move smart­ly po­si­tions 25 Caribbean as­so­ci­a­tions and their votes to be mas­saged di­rect­ly by Zurich. Mean­time, in Asia, FI­FA will stage its own “owned and op­er­at­ed” ASEAN (As­so­ci­a­tion of South­east Asian Na­tions) na­tion­al teams tour­na­ment, to be played Sep­tem­ber 24 to Oc­to­ber 5 in In­done­sia and Hong Kong, Chi­na. FI­FA sub­si­dies will flow.

Dead­line day for FI­FA’s 2027 elec­tion is No­vem­ber 18, 2026, and In­fan­ti­no is still the on­ly de­clared can­di­date. We shall soon see if any­one rais­es his ban­ner in a chal­lenge but it mat­ters not who wins. FI­FA mem­bers will nei­ther re­form the or­gan­i­sa­tion nor po­lice them­selves. Ex­ter­nal reg­u­la­to­ry pres­sure by in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies domi­ciled in re­gions where FI­FA and its mem­ber con­fed­er­a­tions are head­quar­tered, and in par­tic­u­lar the Eu­ro­pean Union, is es­sen­tial. The in­ter­na­tion­al cam­paign of which I am an Ad­vi­so­ry Board mem­ber (vis­it http://Re­boot­FI­FA.com) is pur­su­ing this end. But if there is an elec­tion on March 27, 2027, Greedy Gi­an­ni will pre­vail. And sad­ly, I will say I told you so.

Round and round the mul­ber­ry bush

Re­cent­ly, our na­tion­al team play­ers threat­ened to boy­cott the ap­proach­ing Na­tions League cam­paign be­cause of the TTFA’s (Trinidad and To­ba­go Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion) con­tin­u­ing fail­ure to pay out­stand­ing match fees over­due since 2024. The sto­ry was bro­ken by Lasana Liburd’s on­line mag­a­zine Wired 868. The Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) al­so re­fused to re­lease TTD 2.5 mil­lion to the As­so­ci­a­tion for the cam­paign. Pub­lic out­rage was pal­pa­ble. This lat­est cri­sis in lo­cal “foot­ball­dom” pro­voked my re­sponse on Wired 868: “Tri­ni peo­ple don’t care enough about trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty to do any­thing about this. Nev­er mind the tem­po­rary out­rage. That is why we go round and round the mul­ber­ry bush.

Hard fact. TTFA paid up, of course, which prompt­ed this sar­casm from me: “Yeah. That’ll solve all our prob­lems. It’ll si­lence the tem­po­rary pub­lic out­rage too.” And “abra­cadabra”, the out­rage has dis­ap­peared. We love in­stant grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The pub­lic just wants to watch foot­ball. But Bis­soon­datt, a lo­cal fan, did ask me on Wired: “What can be done to force a res­ig­na­tion… protest­ing? Nope… that won’t work.

Since 2006 we’ve been call­ing for change, grass­roots de­vel­op­ment, etc, etc. Noth­ing changes. So what is the pub­lic/fans to do?” I felt his pain and, in­deed, what about the pub­lic that TTFA cares lit­tle for? The peo­ple who vote in the TTFA are mem­bers of the pub­lic. They be­long to clubs that the pub­lic are mem­bers of and/or sup­port. The pub­lic at­tends match­es and pays good mon­ey in­to the hands of buc­ca­neers. And the pub­lic has far more pow­er than the men who hold of­fice, but does not even recog­nise this.

Over the years, I have been deemed “con­tro­ver­sial” (read: “a trou­ble­mak­er”). I wear this la­bel as a badge of ho­n­our. If one is awash in in­ep­ti­tude, mis­man­age­ment, and even cor­rup­tion and does not earn such a la­bel for rais­ing one’s voice against it, one is com­plic­it.

African-Amer­i­can civ­il rights cam­paign­er and Con­gress­man John Lewis al­ways spoke of “good and nec­es­sary trou­ble.” He stood on a sim­ple rule: “When you see some­thing that is not right, not fair, not just, say some­thing! Do some­thing! Get in good trou­ble, nec­es­sary trou­ble!” So what was my re­sponse to the foot­ball lover’s ques­tion: “That is for peo­ple who are in­ter­est­ed to or­gan­ise...The same peo­ple who crit­i­cised my every ef­fort and sup­port­ed the men now in charge are cry­ing now about the same things I cam­paigned against. “TTFA has not ac­count­ed for World Cup qual­i­fy­ing sub­si­dies and gate re­ceipts; they stall play­er pay­ments for years, and we, the pub­lic, should give them more at the gate or via SporTT?” Play­ers threat­ened a boy­cott. SporTT threat­ens a boy­cott. Good luck to the team but I will boy­cott the Na­tions League match­es. The pub­lic could do what­ev­er it wants. I am a mere ob­serv­er now. When I re­signed from foot­ball of­fice and pol­i­tics in 2020, I told you so.

Min­istry moves

In TTFA’s 2024 elec­tion, nei­ther pres­i­den­tial can­di­date (Kieron Ed­wards and Col­in Wharfe) of­fered a clear philo­soph­i­cal or strate­gic plat­form. The mem­ber­ship se­lect­ed Ed­wards and his ex­ec­u­tive, fu­elled by the usu­al vague promis­es and a heavy dose of an­ti-FI­FA Nor­mal­i­sa­tion Com­mit­tee sen­ti­ment. Now in­to the third year of the cur­rent dis­pen­sa­tion, TTFA lead­er­ship still has not un­veiled a strate­gic vi­sion for our foot­ball fu­ture, nev­er mind a strate­gic plan. TTFA is all hel­ter-skel­ter. But, as they say, “Na­ture ab­hors a vac­u­um”. In the ab­sence of prop­er plan­ning and ac­tion by the gov­ern­ing body, the gov­ern­ment clear­ly in­tends to fill the void.

In my ar­ti­cle “I Must Stop Think­ing” (21/08/2026), I wrote, “The Min­istry of Sport ap­pears to have seen the need for de­ci­sive lead­er­ship and ac­tion in foot­ball...If any­thing use­ful is to come of this Mex­i­can ini­tia­tive, the Min­istry must re­tain ad­min­is­tra­tive con­trol of the project”. This was a com­ment on the Min­istry’s an­nounce­ment of a joint de­vel­op­ment project with the Mex­i­can Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion. Since that time, the Min­is­ter has al­lud­ed to the for­ma­tion of a Min­istry com­mit­tee, in­clud­ing Sha­ka His­lop and An­ton Corneal, to guide na­tion­al foot­ball de­vel­op­ment.

SporTT CEO Arnold Ram elab­o­rat­ed last week, say­ing: “As you know, the Gov­ern­ment can­not get in­to the af­fairs of foot­ball — it’s a sanc­tion by FI­FA. So, we will de­vel­op the plan. We will de­vel­op the sup­port mech­a­nism for this ini­tia­tive, in line and along­side the TTFA, who will be rep­re­sent­ed on this com­mit­tee.” Trans­la­tion: the Min­istry will be in charge and the com­mit­tee will un­doubt­ed­ly sub­sti­tute for TTFA’s in­ef­fec­tive (or dor­mant) Tech­ni­cal Com­mit­tee to guide foot­ball for­ward. This may be un­ortho­dox but the Min­istry clear­ly deems it nec­es­sary. Na­ture ab­hors a vac­u­um, in­deed. And TTFA elec­tions beck­on. Those pre­pared to act on the glar­ing need to fill the lead­er­ship void in the As­so­ci­a­tion have just short of a year and a half to or­gan­ise. Oth­er­wise, we suf­fer the in­cum­bents for an­oth­er four years. And yes, I just told you so.