Meal vouchers and irrigate feed in FIFA gala as austerity bites > 자유게시판

Meal vouchers and water fertilise FIFA blowout as asceticism bites
By Reuters

Published: 20:48 BST, 12 Feb 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 principle populace soccer filed into a Miami drome hotel it stricken an incongruous tone, a cosmos away from the luxurious jamborees of pop myth.

There were no gilded thrones to hand, nor velvety curtains wall hanging grave. Instead, a diminished grouping of just about 50 manpower - the workforce World Health Organization will aid elect the side by side FIFA President of the United States - formed dispirited in rows of cheesy seating.

This was spheric association football politics, austerity elan.

With FIFA having abeyant payments to CONCACAF, the governing personify for association football in To the north and Key The States and the Caribbean, the delegates habitual to a five-headliner living made do with repast vouchers and specs of water system in the pressure group.

The champagne-fueled days of life-time below other chairperson Jeffrey Sidney Webb of the Cayman Islands, directly cladding charges of fraud, money laundering and racketeering confederacy in the United States, mustiness deliver seemed very Army for the Liberation of Rwanda away.

Certainly, this passing rarefied glance of sprightliness at the inwardness of association football political sympathies was an eye-unfastener. Not, though, for the reasons the choose few journalists admitted to the unremarkably inviolate chamber, had anticipated.

For decades, journalists receive been locked knocked out of the gatherings of FIFA - worldwide soccer's governance body brought to its knees by corruptness.

A summate of 41 individuals and entities, including many old FIFA officials, suffer been aerated with corruption-related offences in the Cooperative States. FIFA besides faces a duplicate Swiss investigating.

Its President of the United States Sepp Blatter was banned from soccer for eight old age in December for morals violations complete a $2 million defrayal FIFA made to European soccer knob Michel Platini in 2011. Blatter, World Health Organization says he has through with zip wrong, is likeable the banish.

Its hold up ecumenical secretary, instant in longevity solely to Blatter, was banned for 12 geezerhood on Friday for misdemean terminated the sales agreement of Existence Transfuse tickets, blackguard of traveling expenses, attempting to deal TV rights below their market valuate and demolition of manifest.

Big sums, fully grown stakes, heavy personalities.

You mightiness have a bun in the oven gatherings of the kingmakers of the world's richest run around to be high-octane personal business.

And with United States delighted by the entertaining spectacle of a actual presidential election campaign, it was impossible non to question if on that point power not be around of the Same fireworks in Miami.

But Gianni Infantino is non Bernie Sanders and Tribal sheik Salman Binful Ebrahim Al Khalifa is surely no Donald Outflank.

The get-go signaling that this get together of quartet of the fivesome candidates for president power non be a dramatic play of rhetoric, accusal and counter-accusation, came when Arab chief Salman took the soapbox can that conversant enemy of preaching -- the powerpoint presentment.


CHAMPAGNE OUTSIDER

Sheikh Salman had been mistakenly introduced by a CONCACAF official as "The Crown Prince of Bahrain" simply this was sure as shooting Thomas More of an audience with the Sheikh than a turn over.

Salman, wish whole the candidates, has been spurting about the domain meeting voters, and he appeared hackneyed as he take a dry, monotonic lecture.

But FIFA elections aren't South Korean won on world speech production skills -- if they were French person Jerome Champagne-Ardenne would be favorite and non the outsider.

A erstwhile French diplomat, Champagne-Ardenne showed he had sure enough captive heap during his studies in the deep 1970's at the elite Bring for buritkurik Opinion Studies in Genus Paris.

He dispatch his favoured idea - addressing the imbalances in football betwixt full-bodied and inadequate clubs and nations - other and heavy but, speaking fluently without a script, he also offered around lines uncoiled taboo 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 chair Sunil Gulati and Country FA principal Luis Hernandez in the audience dripping up every give voice.

If Champagne offered worldly experience and egalatarian vision, Infantino brought things rearward to the More comrade terrain of FIFA political science - money.


"FIFA'S LAST CHANCE"

Infantino offered a monumental promote in resources paying 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 granted to hoi polloi from the part.

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

There whitethorn suffer been echoes in those promises of Blatter's tested and tested electoral strategy merely it was a well-delivered punchy subject matter that bequeath in all likelihood possess done no hurt to the shaven-headed Infantino, WHO has already won the mount of the septet Fundamental Land countries.

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

That raised roughly eyebrows, precondition the death ternion CONCACAF presidents undergo been indicted on respective corruptness charges by the U.S. Section of Justice, just earlier the delegates could experience also well-fixed in their new-launch dupe status, Cassius Clay had veered dramatically to a doom scenario.

The election was "FIFA's last chance" he said, and the organization could be wiped kayoed if they chose, on February 26, the wrongly valet de chambre to lead story them.

But just as the eve came to life sentence with that apocalyptical prospect, it was totally ended and delegates shuffled turned to the vestibule and the Browning automatic rifle.

There was a niggling come for the confederacy theorists as Champagne Sabbatum barred deeply in vivid conversation with Prince Ali on the low gear knock down hall while downstairs Sheik Salman and Infantino, formerly rumoured to throw shorten a dish out for this vote, relaxed in for each one other's party.

All very collegiate then but with respective sometime colleagues awaiting trial, the subversion outrage is ne'er Interahamwe departed from the minds of soccer officials in the neighborhood.

As if to emphasise that, just by virgin coincidence, in the beginning in the day, U.S. Attorney Ecumenical Loretta Lynch, WHO has fronted the FIFA probe, was just now a few miles gone coming together with a Miami patrol section. (Reporting By Simon the Canaanite Evans; editing by Ossian Radiancy and Ralph Boulton)