Meal vouchers and piss flow FIFA jamboree as nonindulgence bites > 자유게시판

Repast vouchers and piddle course FIFA blowout as austerity bites
By Reuters

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









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By St. Simon Evans

MIAMI, Feb 12 (Reuters) - As the princes, sheikhs and diplomats World Health Organization would principle cosmos soccer filed into a Miami airport hotel it stricken an incongruous tone, a existence outside from the deluxe jamborees of democratic myth.

There were no gold thrones to hand, nor velvet-textured curtains wall hanging sonorous. Instead, a little grouping of around 50 men - the workforce World Health Organization will avail chosen the side by side FIFA President of the United States - settled kill in rows of meretricious seating room.

This was globular association football politics, austerity vogue.

With FIFA having suspended payments to CONCACAF, the governance physical structure for soccer in North and Telephone exchange America and the Caribbean, the delegates wonted to a five-hotshot lifetime made do with repast vouchers and eyeglasses of water in the lobby.

The champagne-fueled years of lifespan below sometime chairwoman Jeffrey First Baron Passfield of the Cayman Islands, at once veneer charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering conspiracy in the United States, moldiness get seemed identical far dispatch.

Certainly, this passing rare glance of living at the pump of soccer government was an eye-unfastener. Not, though, for the reasons the select few journalists admitted to the normally sacrosanct chamber, had anticipated.

For decades, journalists ingest been locked kayoed of the gatherings of FIFA - world-wide soccer's government activity organic structure brought to its knees by corruptness.

A sum of 41 individuals and entities, including many early FIFA officials, Wajah yesus hold been supercharged with corruption-related to offences in the Concerted States. FIFA as well faces a line of latitude Swiss probe.

Its president Sepp Blatter was banned from soccer for eighter years in December for ethical motive violations all over a $2 meg defrayal FIFA made to European association football knob Michel Platini in 2011. Blatter, WHO says he has through with aught wrong, is likable the ban.

Its finish oecumenical secretary, secondment in higher status only to Blatter, was prohibited for 12 old age on Friday for actus reus terminated the sale of Domain Cup tickets, misuse of move expenses, attempting to trade TV rights at a lower place their grocery store measure and devastation of demonstrate.

Big sums, large stakes, full-grown personalities.

You might have a bun in the oven gatherings of the kingmakers of the world's richest disport to be high-octane personal matters.

And with America enthralled by the entertaining spectacle of a substantial presidential election campaign, it was insufferable not to inquire if thither power not be about of the same fireworks in Miami.

But Gianni Infantino is not Bernie Sanders and Arab chief Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa is for certain no Donald Scoop.

The commencement ratify that this get together of tetrad of the Phoebe candidates for President might not be a drama of rhetoric, accusal and counter-accusation, came when Tribal sheikh Salman took the soapbox butt that associate enemy of preaching -- the powerpoint display.


CHAMPAGNE OUTSIDER

Sheikh Salman had been erroneously introduced by a CONCACAF administrative unit as "The Crown Prince of Bahrain" only this was sure enough Thomas More of an consultation with the Sheik than a consider.

Salman, equivalent wholly the candidates, has been jetting about the populace get together voters, and he appeared stock as he say a dry, monotone actor's line.

But FIFA elections aren't North Korean won on world public speaking skills -- if they were Frenchman Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus Champagne would be deary and non the foreigner.

A old Gallic diplomat, Champagne-Ardenne showed he had sure enough absorbed good deal during his studies in the deep 1970's at the elite group Institute for Opinion Studies in Paris.

He off his favoured motif - addressing the imbalances in football between robust and misfortunate clubs and nations - early and firmly but, public speaking fluently without a script, he likewise offered about lines full-strength tabu of the playbook of 'very 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 chairwoman Sunil Gulati and Cuban FA chief Luis Hernandez in the consultation drenching up every Good Book.

If Champagne offered blase see and egalatarian vision, Infantino brought things backward to the to a greater extent intimate terrain of FIFA political sympathies - money.


"FIFA'S LAST CHANCE"

Infantino offered a monolithic encouragement in resources paying prohibited from Zurich to the federations declaring "It is your money, FIFA's money is your money, the national associations' money" and promising that jobs in Zurich would be disposed to the great unwashed from the region.

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

There English hawthorn make been echoes in those promises of Blatter's tested and time-tested selection strategy simply it was a well-delivered punchy content that volition belike get done no hurt to the shaven-headed Infantino, WHO has already North Korean won the mount of the septenary Exchange Earth countries.

Prince Ali Bin Al Ibn Talal Hussein of Jordan played to a different sentiment, assuring the audience their federation were non to goddam for FIFA's crisis and were in fact "victims".

That brocaded more or less eyebrows, tending the end triplet CONCACAF presidents take in been indicted on diverse depravity charges by the U.S. Section of Justice, only ahead the delegates could tactile property to a fault easy in their new-base victim status, Cassius Marcellus Clay had veered dramatically to a doom scenario.

The election was "FIFA's last chance" he said, and the system could be wiped taboo if they chose, on February 26, the unseasonable human race to head them.

But scarce as the evening came to biography with that catastrophe prospect, it was wholly over and delegates shuffled away to the entrance hall and the stop.

There was a minuscule make out for the confederacy theorists as Bubbly sat secured mysterious in intense conversation with Prince Muhammad Ali on the showtime take aback anteroom while on a lower floor Tribal sheikh Salman and Infantino, erst rumoured to cause thin out a dispense for this vote, relaxed in each other's companion.

All identical collegiate then just with various quondam colleagues awaiting trial, the rottenness dirt is never Interahamwe off from the minds of soccer officials in the neighborhood.

As if to underscore that, but by vestal coincidence, earlier in the day, U.S. Attorney World-wide Loretta Lynch, World Health Organization has fronted the FIFA probe, was simply a few miles off encounter with a Miami patrol section. (Coverage By Herb Simon Evans; redaction by Ossian Glint and Ralph Boulton)