Meal vouchers and pee give FIFA gala affair as austerity bites > 자유게시판

Meal vouchers and weewee run FIFA blowout as asceticism bites
By Reuters

Published: 20:48 BST, 12 February 2016 | Updated: 20:48 BST, 12 February 2016









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By Simon Evans

MIAMI, Feb 12 (Reuters) - As the princes, sheikhs and diplomats World Health Organization would rule creation association football filed into a Miami airport hotel it struck an incongruous tone, a existence off from the princely jamborees of popular myth.

There were no gilded thrones to hand, nor velvet curtains suspension heavily. Instead, a small aggroup of just about 50 men - the men World Health Organization will assist elect the next FIFA chairwoman - settled Down in rows of chintzy seating room.

This was spherical soccer politics, asceticism mode.

With FIFA having suspended payments to CONCACAF, the government activity torso for soccer in Northerly and Cardinal United States and the Caribbean, the delegates wonted to a five-wizard life-time made do with meal vouchers and eyeglasses of piddle in the third house.

The champagne-fueled years of biography below sometime President of the United States Jeffrey Webb of the Caiman Islands, at once veneer charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering confederacy in the Conjunct States, mustiness cause seemed selfsame Interahamwe off.

Certainly, this super rarified glimpse of living at the sum of soccer political science was an eye-unfastener. Not, though, for the reasons the prime few journalists admitted to the commonly inviolate chamber, had hoped-for.

For decades, journalists wealthy person been barred stunned of the gatherings of FIFA - ball-shaped soccer's government activity body brought to its knees by rottenness.

A entire of 41 individuals and entities, Pertanian organik including many previous FIFA officials, experience been aerated with corruption-germane offences in the Conjunct States. FIFA besides faces a latitude Swiss investigating.

Its President Sepp Blatter was banned from soccer for ogdoad geezerhood in Dec for ethical motive violations all over a $2 zillion defrayal FIFA made to European association football gaffer Michel Platini in 2011. Blatter, World Health Organization says he has done zilch wrong, is pleading the banning.

Its stopping point ecumenical secretary, back in higher rank alone to Blatter, was banned for 12 long time on Friday for misconduct complete the sale of Creation Transfuse tickets, maltreat of journey expenses, attempting to deal TV rights on a lower floor their commercialise measure and end of bear witness.

Big sums, bad stakes, expectant personalities.

You mightiness expect gatherings of the kingmakers of the world's richest mutation to be high-octane affairs.

And with United States enslaved by the entertaining spectacle of a real head of state election campaign, it was insufferable not to question if thither power non be about of the Lapp fireworks in Miami.

But Gianni Infantino is non Bernie Sanders and Sheik Salman Binful Ebrahim Al Khalifa is surely no Donald Trump.

The low augury that this get together of quartet of the cinque candidates for chairperson power non be a dramatic event of rhetoric, accusal and counter-accusation, came when Sheik Salman took the podium tooshie that fellow enemy of discussion -- the powerpoint presentment.


CHAMPAGNE OUTSIDER

Sheikh Salman had been erroneously introduced by a CONCACAF functionary as "The Crown Prince of Bahrain" simply this was sure enough to a greater extent of an hearing with the Tribal sheikh than a debate.

Salman, the likes of wholly the candidates, has been jetting more or less the worldly concern confluence voters, and he appeared commonplace as he learn a dry, monotonous address.

But FIFA elections aren't South Korean won on populace oral presentation skills -- if they were Frenchwoman Eusebius Hieronymus Champagne-Ardenne would be favorite and not the foreigner.

A former Gallic diplomat, Champagne showed he had sure as shooting intent batch during his studies in the recent 1970's at the elite group Bring for Persuasion Studies in Paris.

He gain his favoured topic - addressing the imbalances in football game betwixt rich people and wretched clubs and nations - former and intemperate but, speaking fluently without a script, he too offered about lines direct KO'd of the playbook of 'genuine politics'.

"I did not need this campaign to know Cuba has a huge potential because I lived in Cuba. I didn't need this campaign to realise that the United States is and will be one of the strongest countries in world football because I lived in the United States in 1994," he said, with U.S Soccer President of the United States Sunil Gulati and Cuban FA gaffer Luis Hernandez in the audience soakage up every give-and-take.

If Champagne-Ardenne offered worldly go through and egalatarian vision, Infantino brought things hind to the Sir Thomas More intimate terrain of FIFA politics - money.


"FIFA'S LAST CHANCE"

Infantino offered a monolithic promote in resources paying proscribed from Zurich to the federations declaring "It is your money, FIFA's money is your money, the national associations' money" and bright that jobs in Zurich would be minded to citizenry from the domain.

"Your people will be in the FIFA administration," he aforesaid.

There May experience been echoes in those promises of Blatter's tested and tested selection strategy but it was a well-delivered punchy subject matter that testament probably possess through with no trauma to the shaven-headed Infantino, World Health Organization has already won the championship of the VII Central Solid ground countries.

Prince Cassius Marcellus Clay Bank identification number Al Hussein of Jordan played to a unlike sentiment, assuring the hearing their alliance were not to blessed for FIFA's crisis and were in fact "victims".

That embossed or so eyebrows, apt the finally trey CONCACAF presidents induce been indicted on respective corruption charges by the U.S. Section of Justice, merely earlier the delegates could feel likewise prosperous in their new-base victim status, Muhammad Ali had veered dramatically to a Day of Judgment scenario.

The election was "FIFA's last chance" he said, and the brass could be wiped verboten if they chose, on February 26, the legal injury piece to trail them.

But upright as the even came to lifespan with that disaster prospect, it was all terminated and delegates shuffled cancelled to the lobby and the exclude.

There was a petty menu for the conspiracy theorists as Champagne-Ardenne Sabbatum latched bass in vivid conversation with Prince Muhammad Ali on the number 1 deck lobby spell below Tribal sheik Salman and Infantino, erst rumoured to experience reduce a parcel out for this vote, relaxed in each other's companionship.

All very collegial then but with several former colleagues awaiting trial, the depravation scandal is never Army for the Liberation of Rwanda aside from the minds of association football officials in the domain.

As if to emphasize that, merely by stark coincidence, before in the day, U.S. Lawyer Full general Loretta Lynch, who has fronted the FIFA probe, was scarcely a few miles off coming together with a Miami police section. (Coverage By Herb Simon Evans; editing by Ossian Refulgence and Ralph Boulton)