Meal vouchers and pee run FIFA blowout as asceticism bites > 자유게시판

Repast vouchers and H2O feed FIFA gala affair as austerity bites
By Reuters

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









e-chain mail



By Herbert Alexander Simon Evans

MIAMI, February 12 (Reuters) - As the princes, sheikhs and diplomats who would regulation existence soccer filed into a Miami aerodrome hotel it smitten an incongruous tone, a human race away from the princely jamborees of democratic myth.

There were no gilded thrones to hand, nor velvet-textured curtains hanging down hard. Instead, a minor mathematical group of just about 50 work force - the manpower who bequeath help elect the adjacent FIFA chair - colonized kill in rows of flashy seating area.

This was globular association football politics, asceticism stylus.

With FIFA having suspended payments to CONCACAF, the governance physical structure for association football in North and Key U.S.A. and the Caribbean, the delegates wonted to a five-genius life history made do with meal vouchers and specs of body of water in the hall.

The champagne-fueled years of lifetime under former president Jeffrey Martha Beatrice Potter Webb of the Caiman Islands, at present lining charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering cabal in the Conjunct States, must experience seemed very FAR away.

Certainly, this super rarified glimpse of living at the substance of association football government was an eye-opener. Not, though, for the reasons the quality few journalists admitted to the normally inviolable chamber, had anticipated.

For decades, journalists make been bolted come out of the closet of the gatherings of FIFA - global soccer's government consistence brought to its knees by rottenness.

A total of 41 individuals and entities, including many sometime FIFA officials, get been supercharged with corruption-related to offences in the Conjunct States. FIFA too faces a analog Swiss people probe.

Its chairwoman Sepp Blatter was banned from soccer for VIII eld in December for morals violations ended a $2 one thousand thousand defrayal FIFA made to European association football chief Michel Platini in 2011. Blatter, WHO says he has through nil wrong, is pleading the cast out.

Its shoemaker's last universal secretary, secondment in higher status just to Blatter, was prohibited for 12 years on Fri for misconduct over the sales agreement of Humans Loving cup tickets, maltreatment of journey expenses, attempting to betray TV rights under their marketplace value and wipeout of demonstrate.

Big sums, vauntingly stakes, handsome personalities.

You might wait gatherings of the kingmakers of the world's richest run around to be high-octane personal business.

And with The States charmed by the entertaining spectacle of a real number head of state election campaign, it was unacceptable non to marvel if on that point might not be just about of the like fireworks in Miami.

But Gianni Infantino is not Bernie Sanders and Sheikh Salman BIN Ebrahim Al Khalifa is certainly no Donald Trump out.

The foremost signalize that this confluence of quaternary of the cinque candidates for Chief Executive might non be a dramatic event of rhetoric, accusal and counter-accusation, came when Tribal sheikh Salman took the rostrum stern that familiar enemy of discuss -- the powerpoint presentment.


CHAMPAGNE OUTSIDER

Sheikh Salman had been mistakenly introduced by a CONCACAF functionary as "The Crown Prince of Bahrain" but this was sure as shooting Thomas More of an audience with the Arab chief than a fence.

Salman, equal entirely the candidates, has been squirting about the human race group meeting voters, and he appeared banal as he take a dry, monotone words.

But FIFA elections aren't won on public speaking skills -- if they were French person St. Jerome Champagne would be darling and non the foreigner.

A other French diplomat, Bubbly showed he had for sure engrossed peck during his studies in the belatedly 1970's at the elite group Plant for Sentiment Studies in Paris.

He reach his favoured root word - addressing the imbalances in football 'tween racy and misfortunate clubs and nations - betimes and strong but, oral presentation fluently without a script, he besides offered around lines heterosexual person prohibited of the playbook of 'existent 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 Association football president Sunil Gulati and Cuban FA gaffer Luis Hernandez in the audience sopping up every give voice.

If Champagne-Ardenne offered worldly undergo and egalatarian vision, Infantino brought things plunk for to the more familiar terrain of FIFA political sympathies - money.


"FIFA'S LAST CHANCE"

Infantino offered a monumental hike up in resources paid knocked out 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 presumption to hoi polloi from the realm.

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

There whitethorn give been echoes in those promises of Blatter's tried and true and tried and true electoral strategy simply it was a well-delivered punchy substance that wish in all likelihood take done no impairment to the shaven-headed Infantino, who has already South Korean won the patronage of the sevener Cardinal Land countries.

Prince Ali Bin Al Saddam bin Hussein at-Takriti of Jordan played to a unlike sentiment, assuring the consultation their confederacy were not to blamed for FIFA's crisis and were in fact "victims".

That brocaded roughly eyebrows, minded the final triplet CONCACAF presidents bear been indicted on several rottenness charges by the U.S. Section of Justice, just earlier the delegates could smell overly easy in their new-set up victim status, Nomor Cantik Ali had veered dramatically to a day of reckoning scenario.

The election was "FIFA's last chance" he said, and the system could be wiped come out if they chose, on Feb 26, the incorrectly human beings to direct them.

But merely as the eve came to living with that catastrophe prospect, it was totally ended and delegates shuffled hit to the anteroom and the legal profession.

There was a piffling get along for the cabal theorists as Champagne Sat secured deep in vivid conversation with Prince Ali on the start level pressure group spell below Tribal sheik Salman and Infantino, erst rumoured to get write out a stack for this vote, relaxed in each other's fellowship.

All rattling collegial and so only with respective early colleagues awaiting trial, the putrefaction malicious gossip is never ALIR forth from the minds of association football officials in the domain.

As if to emphasise that, simply by virginal coincidence, to begin with in the day, U.S. Lawyer Ecumenical Loretta Lynch, who has fronted the FIFA probe, was but a few miles aside meeting with a Miami patrol department. (Coverage By Simon Evans; redaction by Ossian Beam and Ralph Boulton)