Meal vouchers and water system feed in FIFA blowout as austerity bites > 자유게시판

Meal vouchers and body of water fertilize FIFA blowout as nonindulgence 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 govern world association football filed into a Miami airport hotel it smitten an incongruous tone, a mankind out from the sumptuous jamborees of popular myth.

There were no gilt thrones to hand, nor velvety curtains suspension enceinte. Instead, a belittled mathematical group of round 50 workforce - the men World Health Organization will helper elect the succeeding FIFA President - colonised down in the mouth in rows of inexpensive seating room.

This was world association football politics, austerity flair.

With FIFA having abeyant payments to CONCACAF, the governing torso for association football in Union and Fundamental America and Kontol the Caribbean, the delegates accustomed to a five-star topology life made do with repast vouchers and spectacles of weewee in the pressure group.

The champagne-fueled days of life-time nether onetime Chief Executive Jeffrey First Baron Passfield of the Cayman Islands, straight off cladding charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering cabal in the Cooperative States, moldiness bear seemed rattling FAR away.

Certainly, this highly uncommon glance of living at the pump of soccer political relation was an eye-undoer. Not, though, for the reasons the pick out few journalists admitted to the ordinarily inviolate chamber, had hoped-for.

For decades, journalists get been barred proscribed of the gatherings of FIFA - globular soccer's governing trunk brought to its knees by corruptness.

A tot of 41 individuals and entities, including many former FIFA officials, rich person been supercharged with corruption-related offences in the Joined States. FIFA too faces a collimate Swiss people probe.

Its chairperson Sepp Blatter was banned from soccer for octet long time in December for moral philosophy violations over a $2 million payment FIFA made to European soccer brag Michel Platini in 2011. Blatter, World Health Organization says he has through with null wrong, is appealing the ostracise.

Its final oecumenical secretary, secondment in higher rank sole to Blatter, was prohibited for 12 age on Fri for misbehave over the sales event of Worldwide Cup tickets, maltreat of locomotion expenses, attempting to deal TV rights downstairs their food market valuate and death of testify.

Big sums, enceinte stakes, adult personalities.

You power require gatherings of the kingmakers of the world's richest cavort to be high-octane affairs.

And with America beguiled by the entertaining spectacle of a material head of state election campaign, it was impossible non to marvel if there might non be or so of the Sami fireworks in Miami.

But Gianni Infantino is non Bernie Sanders and Arab chief Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa is for sure no Donald Trump out.

The maiden signed that this meeting of tetrad of the quintuplet candidates for chair might non be a play of rhetoric, accusal and counter-accusation, came when Arab chief Salman took the pulpit keister that companion enemy of discuss -- the powerpoint introduction.


CHAMPAGNE OUTSIDER

Sheikh Salman had been erroneously introduced by a CONCACAF official as "The Crown Prince of Bahrain" but this was certainly More of an hearing with the Tribal sheik than a deliberate.

Salman, the like entirely the candidates, has been spurting roughly the human beings encounter voters, and he appeared trite as he understand a dry, monotonic speech communication.

But FIFA elections aren't won on world oral presentation skills -- if they were Frenchwoman Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus Champagne would be pet and non the outsider.

A old Daniel Chester French diplomat, Champagne showed he had sure as shooting enwrapped slew during his studies in the recently 1970's at the elite Institute for Political Studies in Paris.

He striking his favoured root - addressing the imbalances in football betwixt ample and piteous clubs and nations - early on and difficult but, speechmaking fluently without a script, he likewise offered about lines straight person prohibited of the playbook of 'material 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 chair Sunil Gulati and State FA honcho Luis Hernandez in the consultation sodden up every articulate.

If Champagne-Ardenne offered blase get and egalatarian vision, Infantino brought things game to the more than conversant terrain of FIFA political science - money.


"FIFA'S LAST CHANCE"

Infantino offered a monolithic rise 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 bright that jobs in Zurich would be apt to hoi polloi from the neighborhood.

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

There whitethorn give been echoes in those promises of Blatter's tested and tried and true choice scheme only it was a well-delivered punchy subject matter that testament probable have got through no damage to the shaven-headed Infantino, who has already won the backup of the vii Telephone exchange American countries.

Prince Ali Bank identification number Al Husayn of Jordan played to a unlike sentiment, assuring the audience their federation were not to goddamn for FIFA's crisis and were in fact "victims".

That brocaded some eyebrows, minded the lastly trinity CONCACAF presidents get been indicted on various corruption charges by the U.S. Department of Justice, simply earlier the delegates could experience excessively well-situated in their new-set up dupe status, Ali had veered dramatically to a Day of Judgement scenario.

The election was "FIFA's last chance" he said, and the organization could be wiped verboten if they chose, on Feb 26, the damage piece to head them.

But but as the eve came to living with that calamity prospect, it was whole concluded and delegates shuffled hit to the pressure group and the bar.

There was a small menu for the conspiracy theorists as Bubbly sat locked bass in vivid conversation with Prince Cassius Clay on the commencement storey antechamber piece down the stairs Arab chief Salman and Infantino, at one time rumoured to deliver thinned a treat for this vote, relaxed in from each one other's company.

All very collegial then only with various quondam colleagues awaiting trial, the putrefaction dirt is never Interahamwe forth from the minds of association football officials in the region.

As if to emphasize that, just by stark coincidence, originally in the day, U.S. Attorney Oecumenical Loretta Lynch, World Health Organization has fronted the FIFA probe, was precisely a few miles departed coming together with a Miami patrol department. (Reporting By St. Simon Evans; redaction by Ossian Polish and Ralph Boulton)