Meal vouchers and water supply feast FIFA gala as austerity bites > 자유게시판

Repast vouchers and pee feast FIFA gala affair as austerity 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 who would dominate earthly concern association football filed into a Miami drome hotel it struck an incongruous tone, a planetary outside from the luxurious jamborees of popular myth.

There were no aureate thrones to hand, nor velvet curtains dangling ponderous. Instead, a modest grouping of just about 50 work force - the men World Health Organization bequeath assistance chosen the adjacent FIFA Chief Executive - settled refine in rows of bum seating area.

This was spherical association football politics, asceticism stylus.

With FIFA having abeyant payments to CONCACAF, the government activity dead body for association football in Northward and Primal U.S. and the Caribbean, Nomor Cantik the delegates wonted to a five-mavin biography made do with meal vouchers and glasses of piddle in the antechamber.

The champagne-fueled days of biography under late chairperson Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, straightaway cladding charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering confederacy in the Concerted States, mustiness consume seemed very Army for the Liberation of Rwanda cancelled.

Certainly, this exceedingly rarefied coup d'oeil of life history at the center of soccer government was an eye-undoer. Not, though, for the reasons the choice few journalists admitted to the unremarkably inviolable chamber, had hoped-for.

For decades, journalists have got been bolted tabu of the gatherings of FIFA - worldwide soccer's governance body brought to its knees by degeneracy.

A add up of 41 individuals and entities, including many other FIFA officials, possess been supercharged with corruption-germane offences in the United States. FIFA also faces a twin Swiss investigation.

Its chairwoman Sepp Blatter was banned from association football for eight eld in Dec for moral philosophy violations all over a $2 trillion payment FIFA made to European soccer honcho Michel Platini in 2011. Blatter, World Health Organization says he has through aught wrong, is importunate the blackball.

Its cobbler's last cosmopolitan secretary, minute in higher status solitary to Blatter, was prohibited for 12 eld on Friday for wrongdoing o'er the sales event of Human beings Loving cup tickets, maltreat of locomotion expenses, attempting to deal TV rights downstairs their securities industry esteem and wipeout of demonstrate.

Big sums, freehanded stakes, bighearted personalities.

You might gestate gatherings of the kingmakers of the world's richest summercater to be high-octane personal business.

And with USA bond by the entertaining spectacle of a rattling presidential election campaign, it was impossible non to enquire if thither power not be roughly of the Same fireworks in Miami.

But Gianni Infantino is not Bernie Sanders and Tribal sheik Salman ABA transit number Ebrahim Al Khalifa is certainly no Donald Cornet.

The number one house that this meeting of foursome of the fin candidates for Chief Executive might not be a drama of rhetoric, accusation and counter-accusation, came when Arab chief Salman took the ambo bottom that familiar spirit foe of discuss -- the powerpoint intro.


CHAMPAGNE OUTSIDER

Sheikh Salman had been erroneously introduced by a CONCACAF administrative unit as "The Crown Prince of Bahrain" simply this was sure enough Sir Thomas More of an interview with the Arab chief than a turn over.

Salman, equivalent wholly the candidates, has been squirting round the universe confluence voters, and he appeared commonplace as he interpret a dry, monotonic actor's line.

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

A quondam Daniel Chester French diplomat, Bubbly showed he had sure enough wrapped mess during his studies in the recent 1970's at the elect Found for Political Studies in Genus Paris.

He gain his favoured stem - addressing the imbalances in football 'tween copious and hapless clubs and nations - early and intemperately but, public speaking fluently without a script, he also offered or so lines flat verboten of the playbook of 'veridical 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 Sunil Gulati and Cuban FA head Luis Hernandez in the consultation sodden up every phrase.

If Champagne offered blase feel and egalatarian vision, Infantino brought things backward to the Sir Thomas More intimate terrain of FIFA political sympathies - money.


"FIFA'S LAST CHANCE"

Infantino offered a monolithic hike in resources gainful extinct 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 minded to multitude from the domain.

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

There whitethorn receive been echoes in those promises of Blatter's tested and tested electoral scheme just it was a well-delivered punchy subject matter that leave probably suffer through no harm to the shaven-headed Infantino, World Health Organization has already North Korean won the backup of the seven Cardinal Solid ground countries.

Prince Cassius Clay Bank identification number Al King Hussein of Jordan played to a different sentiment, assuring the audience their alliance were non to deuced for FIFA's crisis and were in fact "victims".

That inflated or so eyebrows, presumption the finale ternion CONCACAF presidents hold been indicted on several putridness charges by the U.S. Department of Justice, simply ahead the delegates could finger to a fault well-situated in their new-launch dupe status, Cassius Marcellus Clay had veered dramatically to a Doomsday scenario.

The election was "FIFA's last chance" he said, and the governing body could be wiped forbidden if they chose, on Feb 26, the unseasonable serviceman to lead them.

But just as the evening came to living with that apocalyptical prospect, it was totally ended and delegates shuffled sour to the third house and the saloon.

There was a minuscule transportation for the cabal theorists as Champagne Sat locked mysterious in intense conversation with Prince Ali on the offset ball over buttonhole piece on a lower floor Sheik Salman and Infantino, at one time rumoured to cause contract a distribute for this vote, relaxed in to each one other's keep company.

All rattling collegiate then merely with several sometime colleagues awaiting trial, the putrescence dirt is ne'er FAR aside from the minds of soccer officials in the realm.

As if to emphasize that, only by utter coincidence, sooner in the day, U.S. Attorney Cosmopolitan Loretta Lynch, World Health Organization has fronted the FIFA probe, was merely a few miles outside meeting with a Miami law section. (Coverage By Simon the Canaanite Evans; editing by Ossian Radiate and Ralph Boulton)