FootBiz newsletter #182: FIFA's legitimacy crisis posing on-field questions
People doubting the credibility of the product on the pitch is a huge issue for FIFA
Well if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions.
FIFA are finding out the hard way that their penchant for bending the rules in pursuit of financial goals does, in fact, have repercussions.
This is why optics matter.
(This is also why there is increasingly legal opposition to one single body both being a regulator and the competition organiser who profits.)
In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the past few days, Argentina’s heart-pounding late comeback against Egypt only served to stoke up more anger at world football’s governing body after some curious refereeing saw Egypt have a brilliant counter-attacking goal disallowed as the world champions once again saw the softer side of the officials.
“It’s all about money,” claimed Egypt coach Hossam Hassan.
Infantino’s fondness for power and money have damaged FIFA’s standing
“They want Messi to stay in the tournament. In football, many things happen off the pitch because of interests. What happened was unfair. Egypt deserved to qualify. We were the better team.
“We have been treated unfairly today. We have suffered injustice. It is my own way of speaking up and standing up.”
Coming hot on the heels of FIFA’s intervention in the Balogun Affair (which isn’t really about Balogun at all) there has probably never been a lower public opinion of FIFA, which is quite something for an organisation that was smuggling criminal executives out of a hotel covered by bed sheets only a decade ago.
FIFA is in the midst of a credibility crisis. The perception that they are willing to put their thumb on the scales of sporting integrity if a little more money could be on the cards is, ultimately, the sort of thing that should bring down the organisation’s leadership. That Gianni Infantino is 99.9% certain to be re-elected unopposed this year only highlights how divorced from reality the body has become.
Balogun’s ban being suspended has reduced trust in FIFA even further
Of the many critiques of FIFA flying around, some make sense and others less so, but there are many.
European lawmakers have doubled down on calls for an investigation into Infantino, while French fans have been outraged that all five officials (including VAR) for their quarter-final with Morocco are Argentine.
That one seems less of an issue to me — is there any France-Argentina rivalry beyond one beating the other in a World Cup final? — but, again, the seeds of doubt have been sewn by FIFA themselves.
There are others:
Messi should have been sent off earlier in the tournament (by Balogun or Quansah standards) and wasn’t. Their draw through this tournament was the easiest. They have been given the most penalties (after breaking a record for most penalties given in 2022).
Oh, and Argentina have committed more fouls than England, but have received less than half as many cards.
All of the above are easily explained individually, but when you’ve punctured your reputation to this extent, the explanations don’t land the same. And people remember just a year ago seeing Infantino changing the rules unannounced in order to hand Inter Miami a place at the Club World Cup, despite losing in the first round of the MLS playoffs.
So when we wrote about a credibility crisis in Tuesday’s newsletter, this is how it manifests itself. This is how it grows and takes over the conversation.
Now that the United States and Portugal have both bowed out, nobody is in any doubt that Argentina winning the final and Messi receiving the World Cup from a beaming Donald Trump is now FIFA’s best commercial outcome.
People are asking whether they’re trying to affect that outcome’s likelihood, and the questions are getting louder.
UEFA have been prodding away at FIFA’s legitimacy for some time now. If European lawmakers and European football’s governing body can make some noise then it may help a little, but the other side of FIFA is that they ultimately end up being answerable to no-one.
Whether Argentina are being favoured is being openly asked
If they keep securing more revenue for their member associations, those in charge keep getting re-elected.
A line Infantino has repeated many times over the last decade is: “The money of FIFA is your money.”
It has become almost an excuse to do whatever it takes in the pursuit of commercial success.
So is it any wonder, given their history of crossing lines, that nobody appears sure how far FIFA will go in that pursuit?
A separate but semi-related thought: while there is a broader backlash against VAR in football that could end up seeing some of its uses rolled back and its scope limited, one problem that had never really occurred to us was what happens if people have no faith in the fairness of the competition organiser.
Because if a critical mass of people truly believe that a team is being favoured and huge decisions are being made (or re-litigated) via VAR then the system is in real trouble.
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