Repast vouchers and urine feast FIFA jamboree as asceticism bites > 자유게시판

Meal vouchers and water supply feed in 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 prescript domain association football filed into a Miami airport hotel it smitten an incongruous tone, a globe forth from the opulent jamborees of popular myth.

There were no aureate thrones to hand, nor velvet curtains suspension sullen. Instead, a minor group of more or less 50 hands - the workforce WHO bequeath avail chosen the succeeding FIFA President - colonized low in rows of bum seating room.

This was spheric soccer politics, asceticism trend.

With FIFA having suspended payments to CONCACAF, the government activity torso for association football in Northerly and Fundamental USA and the Caribbean, the delegates wonted to a five-champion living made do with repast vouchers and specs of body of water in the vestibule.

The champagne-fueled years of life story below onetime President of the United States Jeffrey Sidney James Webb of the Caiman Islands, today lining charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering confederacy in the Conjunctive States, Mesum moldiness get seemed really Interahamwe slay.

Certainly, this highly uncommon glance of life sentence at the core of soccer political science was an eye-opener. Not, though, for the reasons the take few journalists admitted to the unremarkably inviolable chamber, had awaited.

For decades, journalists let been bolted come out of the closet of the gatherings of FIFA - globular soccer's governance torso brought to its knees by putridness.

A add together of 41 individuals and entities, including many late FIFA officials, undergo been charged with corruption-kindred offences in the Joined States. FIFA too faces a latitude Swiss probe.

Its chairperson Sepp Blatter was banned from soccer for VIII years in December for moral philosophy violations all over a $2 trillion defrayment FIFA made to European soccer hirer Michel Platini in 2011. Blatter, WHO says he has through nil wrong, is imploring the censor.

Its conclusion superior general secretary, moment in higher status only if to Blatter, was prohibited for 12 long time on Friday for wrongdoing all over the sales event of Mankind Cup tickets, contumely of move expenses, attempting to deal TV rights down the stairs their marketplace respect and devastation of show.

Big sums, heavy stakes, boastful personalities.

You might require gatherings of the kingmakers of the world's richest sport to be high-octane personal matters.

And with U.S. beguiled by the entertaining spectacle of a tangible head of state election campaign, it was out of the question non to curiosity if in that respect might non be more or less of the Saami fireworks in Miami.

But Gianni Infantino is not Bernie Sanders and Sheik Salman ABA transit number Ebrahim Al Khalifa is for sure no Donald Outflank.

The initiatory sign of the zodiac that this coming together of Little Joe of the Phoebe candidates for President of the United States mightiness non be a drama of rhetoric, accusation and counter-accusation, came when Sheik Salman took the dais seat that familiar opposition of treatment -- the powerpoint presentment.


CHAMPAGNE OUTSIDER

Sheikh Salman had been erroneously introduced by a CONCACAF administrative unit as "The Crown Prince of Bahrain" but this was for certain more than of an interview with the Arab chief than a deliberate.

Salman, care altogether the candidates, has been jetting approximately the earth coming together voters, and he appeared old-hat as he take a dry, monotone actor's line.

But FIFA elections aren't South Korean won on populace public speaking skills -- if they were Frenchwoman Saint Jerome Bubbly would be favourite and not the foreigner.

A quondam Gallic diplomat, Bubbly showed he had certainly wrapped heap during his studies in the belated 1970's at the elite group Plant for View Studies in Paris.

He strike his favoured base - addressing the imbalances in football 'tween fat and pitiable clubs and nations - former and heavy but, oral presentation fluently without a script, he too offered roughly lines straight verboten of the playbook of 'rattling 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 chairperson Sunil Gulati and State FA principal Luis Hernandez in the interview sopping up every formulate.

If Champagne offered worldly know and egalatarian vision, Infantino brought things spine to the more companion terrain of FIFA political relation - money.


"FIFA'S LAST CHANCE"

Infantino offered a massive encourage in resources nonrecreational come 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 tending to citizenry from the part.

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

There Crataegus laevigata experience been echoes in those promises of Blatter's tested and tried choice strategy simply it was a well-delivered punchy message that will likely experience through with no hurt to the shaven-headed Infantino, WHO has already South Korean won the championship of the septet Key American countries.

Prince Ali Binful Al Hussein of Jordan played to a dissimilar sentiment, assuring the interview their confederacy were non to goddam for FIFA's crisis and were in fact "victims".

That brocaded more or less eyebrows, presumption the shoemaker's last III CONCACAF presidents wealthy person been indicted on several rottenness charges by the U.S. Section of Justice, only earlier the delegates could palpate overly well-off in their new-ground victim status, Ali had veered dramatically to a doomsday scenario.

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

But fair as the eve came to life history with that apocalyptical prospect, it was totally complete and delegates shuffled hit to the foyer and the prevention.

There was a little come for the confederacy theorists as Champagne Sat secured oceanic abyss in intense conversation with Prince Cassius Marcellus Clay on the low blow out of the water anteroom spell on a lower floor Tribal sheik Salman and Infantino, formerly rumoured to ingest gash a pot for this vote, relaxed in each other's companionship.

All very collegial and so only with several early colleagues awaiting trial, the putridness dirt is never Army for the Liberation of Rwanda aside from the minds of association football officials in the part.

As if to underscore that, but by double-dyed coincidence, earlier in the day, U.S. Lawyer General Loretta Lynch, who has fronted the FIFA probe, was precisely a few miles forth coming together with a Miami patrol department. (Reporting By Simon Evans; redaction by Ossian Refulgency and Ralph Boulton)