THE LOWLY NEWSPAPERMAN: Infantino’s rotten Fifa reign calls Motsepe’s morality into question

The stink of corruption engulfs Fifa under Gianni Infantino more than at any time during the tenure of the outsize ego that is Sepp Blatter. And as Patrice Motsepe’s bromance with the Italian blooms, Africa looks set to continue to be a Fifa vassal, totally bereft of dignity.

There was this legend during the dictatorial and corrupt reign of Sepp Blatter as president of Fifa that he considered himself the second-most-important human being on the planet after the pope. So much so that the protocol officers were told to adjust his requirements to just a tiny notch below that of the pontiff.

For instance, if protocol dictated that the pope take only three steps from the door of an aeroplane into an awaiting car, Blatter insisted that his steps be four.

Such was the outsized ego of the man who ruled world football with an iron fist and commanded authority through patronage. The irony of Blatter’s delusions of grandeur did not, however, extend to aspiring to the holiness side of things. He was widely considered one of the most corrupt leaders on the world stage during his tenure at the helm of Fifa, compared by some to despotic generals and Mafia bosses.

The brave and celebrated journalist Andrew Jennings, who wrote several books and produced explosive investigative stories about the inner workings of football’s governing body, aptly said that “under former presidents (Jao) Havelange and Blatter Fifa was an organised crime syndicate”.

Despite his rotten reputation, Blatter won five successive elections, which saw him run the organisation from 1998 to 2015. He was forced to resign shortly after his 2015 victory, after the FBI pounced on some of his powerful lieutenants for corrupt activities. The Teflon Don himself was left unscathed and, because he covered his tracks so well, the 90-year-old is living out his last years close to his hometown in the Swiss Alps with no fear of ever having to account for his transgressions.

Much of the raw material that eventually brought Blatter down and led to his sidekicks being brought to justice came from the incredible work that Jenkins had done.

Explaining why this obviously filthy man had been given mandate after mandate to run Fifa, Jenkins pointed to the man’s patronage system. He had cynically exploited the majority poor countries in Fifa’s 200-plus-member ecosystem and plied their associations with so-called development funds (which mostly end up in executives’ pockets rather in worthy projects) and also plied the same executives with direct moola (which went straight into the pockets where it was supposed to go).

“The delegates that will vote for him are from countries that don’t have professional football, [and] are given a million dollars a year to spend on development grants. So they’ll vote for him. No credibility,” said Jenkins before the 2015 vote.

His successor, erstwhile Uefa secretary-general Gianni Infantino, came with great promises of exorcising his evil spirit. Besides undertaking to root out corruption, he pledged to put football, and not the politics of football, back at the centre of Fifa’s work.