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Iran Soccer Stars Speak Out on Protests; Group Urges FIFA Ban
Some of the country’s most famous players have expressed support for street protests over the death of a young woman. On Thursday, an activist group went further: It asked FIFA to bar Iran from the World Cup.One of the most beloved players in Iran’s soccer history had his family home raided by the authorities after speaking out against the government. At least two other well-known players have been arrested and detained for lending support to the protests that have roiled Iran since the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini, on Sept. 16.And six weeks before the World Cup in Qatar, the Iranian national team’s star forward has suggested that he and his teammates are subject to what is in effect a gag order, warned that even commenting on the protests might cost them their places on the team. Unable to speak publicly, Iran’s players prepared for their final tuneup game this week in Austria with what amounted to a silent protest instead, covering their jerseys in black jackets during the national anthem.Now, a group that has long campaigned for women and girls to be allowed into stadiums to watch soccer in Iran has urged the game’s global governing body, FIFA, to intervene. In a letter to the soccer body’s president on Thursday, the group called on FIFA to throw Iran’s team out of the World Cup for a “blatant violation” of soccer’s rules on governmental interference.As Iranian football fans, with heavy heart we asked FIFA, due to ongoing human rights violation based on Articles 3-4 of its statutes, immediately expel Iran from #Qatar2022 Worldcup.Open letter to @FIFAcom⬇️#MahsaAmini#مهسا_امینی#banIRfromWorldcup#StandwithIranianWomen pic.twitter.com/b1tbOJR3T2— OpenStadiums (@openStadiums) September 30, 2022
“The Iranian Football Association is an important ambassador of the Islamic Republic and is acting in line with the repressive regime,” the activist group, Open Stadiums, wrote in a letter to FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino. “It comes as no surprise, then, that they have prohibited footballers from showing any solidarity with the Iranian citizens’ call for freedom and the victims of the same authorities’ brutal crackdown.The letter asked FIFA “to immediately expel Iran from the World Cup 2022 in Qatar.”FIFA declined to comment on the letter on Thursday.The request to eject Iran was made more in hope than expectation: FIFA is unlikely to eject the team from a tournament for which it has qualified, especially so close to the competition, nor has it shown any effort to pressure Iran with anything more than public statements. A majority of Iranian fans also would oppose to a World Cup ban; many of them revere the national team, which is known as Team Melli, and see it as a representative of the people rather than the government.More on the Protests in IranA Women-Led Uprising: Casting off their legally required head scarves, Iranian women have been at the forefront of the demonstrations, supplying the defining images of defiance.Economic Despair: While Iranians have a range of grievances to choose from, the sorry state of Iran’s economy has been one of the main forces driving the protests.Attacks on Kurds: Iranian officials, who blame Kurdish groups for fomenting some of the protests, have launched a string of attacks against the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq.Power of Protests Wanes: Mass protests like the ones in Iran were once considered a grave threat to even the fiercest autocrat. But their odds of success have plummeted worldwide, a new study shows.But soccer’s leadership could face considerable pressure from the impact of the protests sweeping Iran after the death of Amini, a 22-year-old woman who had been arrested by the country’s morality police; any effort by the government to silence the national team’s players; and repercussions against current and former players who have publicly supported the protests.At Iran’s game last week in St. Pölten, Austria, security officers ejected several fans who had brought signs bearing the picture of Mahsa Amini into the stands.Christian Bruna/EPA, via ShutterstockInfantino visited Tehran in 2018 to watch the final of the Asian Champions League, a game for which a small group of women was permitted to enter the city’s Azadi Stadium. In the months that followed, he claimed that FIFA had made “repeated calls” to the Iranian authorities to “address the unacceptable situation” of women not being permitted to enter stadiums.“Our position is firm and clear,” Infantino said in 2019, after a fan set herself on fire outside a courthouse where she faced being jailed for having attended a game. “Women have to be allowed into football stadiums in Iran.” He restated that position as recently as last year, when he praised the work of the president of Iran’s federation after a meeting in Doha.Open Stadiums on Thursday said it had concluded that “these were all empty words and promises.” In March, for example, women holding tickets to a match in the northeastern city of Mashhad were denied entry when they tried to enter the stadium. Some were attacked with pepper spray by security officers.“Nothing has changed,” the group wrote to Infantino. “Iranian women remain locked out of our beautiful game, and we are systematically repressed when we try to enter stadiums.” The group accused Infantino and FIFA of allowing a “gross human rights violation” to happen with its “protection and approval.”Female protesters burned their legally required head scarves and cut their hair to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested for failing to cover her hair modestly enough.Getty ImagesSeveral of the country’s most famous players, including Ali Daei — for years the leading scorer in international soccer history — have criticized the government both for Amini’s death and the subsequent repression of protests. “Solve the problems of the Iranian people rather than using repression, violence and arrests,” Daei wrote on Instagram.One of the most prominent soccer voices to speak out has been Ali Karimi, once of Bayern Munich and arguably the most successful Iranian player of all time. Karimi, now 43, has for days used his social media feeds — including his Instagram account, which has almost 13 million followers — to criticize the government; to share footage of the protests and the violent response of the police; and even to advise his followers on how to circumvent blocks on Iranian internet access.Government officials and their allies have called for Karimi to be arrested, and it has been reported that state television is under instructions not to mention either him or his former teammate, Daei, by name.On Monday night, Karimi’s house in the Tehran suburb of Lavasan was seized by the authorities, with a large concrete block placed at its entrance. Other properties were also reported to have been “sealed.” In response, more than a million Iranians added their names to a petition circulating on social media that said, “I stand with Ali Karimi.”Karimi, now believed to be in the United Arab Emirates, responded on Instagram that “a house without soil is worthless.”Iran’s best player, Sardar Azmoun, expressed support on Instagram for the protests in Iran before deleting the post. He suggested that Iranian officials had barred the team from commenting.Jakub Sukup/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHis successors on the national team say they have not been able to be quite so outspoken. Sardar Azmoun, a striker with the German side Bayer Leverkusen, suggested in an Instagram post that “national team rules” prevented players from expressing their views on the protest before insisting that he would willingly “sacrifice” his place at the World Cup for “one hair on the heads of Iranian women.”A number of other players posted similar messages. A few hours later, they had all been deleted. Some players “blacked out” their social media accounts, while Azmoun — known as the Iranian Messi and widely considered his country’s best player — removed all imagery from his Instagram feed for several days. When images reappeared on Wednesday, the account featured a carefully worded message of support for Iran’s women.The unease within the national team — which has spent the past two weeks in Austria on a pre-World Cup training camp — became clear before a game with Senegal on Tuesday. At the request of the Iranian authorities, no fans had been allowed to access the stadium, though a group of protesters had gathered outside. As the Iranian anthem played, and the protesters shouts carried through the air, the players remained impassive, the flag on their jerseys hidden beneath thick black coats.The country’s authorities have insisted that they will “take action against the celebrities who fan the flames of the riots,” the INSA news agency reported, attributing the comments to Tehran’s provincial governor, Mohsen Mansouri.On Thursday, they followed through on the threat. State news agencies confirmed that Hossein Mahini, a defender who had been part of Iran’s squad at the 2014 World Cup and had most recently been playing for Saipa, a second-division team in Tehran, had been arrested for “supporting and encouraging riots on his social media pages.”About 24 hours later, Azmoun was back on Instagram. In a new post that was both a subtle challenge to the national team’s gag order and a signal of his solidarity, he posted an image of Mahini underneath a large blue heart. More - in Soccer
A Biennial World Cup Is Dead, but FIFA’s Fight Isn’t Over
FIFA has quietly given up on a plan to hold the World Cup every two years. But surrender may not mean peace for its president, Gianni Infantino.DOHA, Qatar — Gianni Infantino strode into the bright lights of a packed convention center alongside the emir of Qatar on Friday and declared that he expected this year’s World Cup to be the best ever. It was not an unusual boast; Infantino has made it before, in Russia in 2018, and he will surely make it again when the tournament heads to North America in 2026. But behind his beaming smile, and his bombastic words, the trip to the desert had been the setting for the FIFA president’s latest disappointment.It was here where yet another of Infantino’s hopes for revolutionary change, the kind of bold but ultimately failed plan that has marked his presidency of soccer’s global governing body, finally came to an end. The divisive efforts to double the frequency of the men’s World Cup, to milk FIFA’s multibillion-dollar cash cow every two years instead of every four, are over.While Infantino reminded FIFA’s members, gathered together in person for the first time in three years, that the idea of a biennial World Cup had not been his — a claim that was technically accurate — he had spent a significant amount of financial and political capital to try to engineer what would have amounted to one of the most significant changes in soccer history. Polls were commissioned to showcase support. Experts were enlisted to push back against critics. But the concept’s opponents never wavered: By last fall, European and South American soccer leaders were already threatening a boycott if it came to fruition.In Doha, Infantino finally raised the white flag.The reversal, yet another capitulation on yet another of his grand ideas, followed earlier blunders that have led to damaging rifts with important constituencies. In 2018, Infantino tried to force through a $25 billion deal with the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank to sell some of FIFA’s top assets and create new club and national team competitions, provoking a fight so bitter that he and the leader of European soccer did not speak for a year.In 2019, FIFA used back-channel efforts to try to expand this year’s World Cup to 48 teams from its planned 32. The proposal was abandoned because it would have required the host, Qatar, to share games with its neighbors, including a group that was then engaged in a prolonged economic blockade of the tiny Gulf nation.A Guide to the 2022 World CupThe 32-team tournament kicks off in Qatar on Nov. 21.F.A.Q.: When will the games take place? Who are the favorites? Will Lionel Messi be there? Our primer answers your questions.The Matchups: The group assignments are set. Here’s a breakdown of the draw and a look at how each country qualified.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.Last week, Infantino, 52, could not quite bring himself to say explicitly that the biennial World Cup, the source of so much acrimony over the past year, was not going to happen. Instead, he allowed only that it was now time to “find agreements and compromises.”Infantino, with the emir of Qatar on Friday, predicted this year’s World Cup would be the best edition of the event ever.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersFIFA, he told delegates, needed new competitions, the kind that would produces the type of revenues needed to fulfill the promises FIFA has made to its 211 member federations. No FIFA president has been generous as Infantino, and for him follow-through is suddenly vital: He announced on Thursday that he would stand for re-election next year.Plans for future events are already taking shape. Annual competitions for boys and girls are planned, with a 48-team youth event for boys and 24-team girls competition unlikely to face any opposition. And opposition to an expanded Club World Cup to be played every four years — another Infantino priority — is now surprisingly muted. A 24-team Club World Cup had been awarded to China for 2021 but was scrapped because of the coronavirus pandemic and then sidelined altogether as Infantino focused his energies on the biennial World Cup.Now, with even once-reticent European officials engaging in positive talks, the Club World Cup — potentially expanded even more, to 32 teams — is likely to be agreed upon in the next few months. The new event could begin as soon as 2025. Or it could be delayed until 2027 should FIFA, in the face of resilient European opposition, find an alternative national team competition to the biennial World Cup. Some regional bodies, including Concacaf, the group responsible for soccer in North and Central America, are still pushing for a major new national-team competition.“I think the appetite is there for change, and I think the rest of the world really wants change,” said the Concacaf president, Victor Montagliani.Montagliani suggested a revived and expanded version of the mothballed Confederations Cup, a largely unpopular tournament held in World Cup host countries as a test event, might be an option, as could a global Nations League that could feed into a new quadrennial event for its regional winners — an idea some Europeans ridiculed as a biennial World Cup “by the back door.”At the heart of much of the tension, though, remains a bigger fight: the battle for supremacy between European soccer and FIFA. European officials have been angered by what they perceive as efforts by Infantino, a former UEFA general secretary, to diminish Europe in an effort to bolster his popularity around the world, and signs of their rift were clear in Qatar last week. Several members of UEFA’s delegation, for example, including its president, Aleksander Ceferin, were notable by their absence at Friday’s World Cup draw, an event that took place only a day after they had taken part in the FIFA Congress.Infantino has talked openly about breaking Europe’s stranglehold on success — FIFA last year appeared to encourage efforts to found a breakaway European Super League before walking away from the project as it collapsed — and he retains important allies who share his concerns about its dominance.“What are the rest of us supposed to do? Just twiddle our thumbs and send players and capital over to Europe?” said Montagliani, a Canadian. “That can’t happen. I’m sorry. The reality is, they have as much of a fiduciary duty in terms of the rest of the world, and I think it is time that we all get around the table and figure that out.”The now-doomed biennial World Cup campaign saw Infantino bring other allies into the fight, including leveraging popular former players and coaches to press the issue on his behalf. The efforts were led by Arsène Wenger, the former Arsenal coach, who toured the world espousing the benefits of the competition, and members of the FIFA Legends program, a FIFA-funded group of former international stars, who also offered glowing reviews. (Current players were by and large opposed to the idea.)At the same time, opinion polls and surveys and public relations consultants were tasked with changing minds of a skeptical news media and wary fan groups. In the end, though, the effort produced only disruption and discord. And it does not appear to have been cheap: FIFA last week reported a spike in its communications costs in its latest financial disclosure. They rose by almost $10 million — 62 percent — compared with the previous year.Now, as he pushes ahead and makes promises for his re-election, some are waiting for, even expecting, Infantino’s next big idea, one that could deliver cash to his constituents and also the legacy as a change-maker that he craves. More
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Russia, Soccer and a Line Drawn Too Late
Soccer did not have to allow itself to be the field in which geopolitical rivalries played out, or the stage on which oligarchs sought power and prestige.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.The troops were already over the border, the fighter jets screaming low through the skies, smoke billowing from the airfields when Schalke decided to act. The sound of the air raid sirens wailing, the sight of families huddled in subway stations, the images of thousands desperately fleeing Kyiv, a full-scale invasion: That was where it drew the line.Everything else, Schalke had been prepared to swallow. It did not bat an eyelid during the brief, brutal war with Georgia in 2008, or at Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, or at the downing of a passenger jet the same year, or at the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018, or at Vladimir V. Putin’s longstanding support for and arming of Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime in Syria.Throughout all of that, Schalke’s royal blue jerseys were proudly adorned with the logo of Gazprom, the energy giant that is majority-owned by the Russian state and has, variously, been described as a “geopolitical tool” and a “politicized weapon” wielded by Putin and a handpicked cadre of his cronies.That has been the case for 15 years — making it one of the longest-running sponsorship arrangements in European soccer — ever since Gerhard Schröder, the former German premier who now works with Gazprom, suggested the firm might like to invest in Schalke.That many of the club’s fans have long been uneasy with the relationship — warning more than once about the team being seen as the “lap dogs of an autocrat” — made no difference. The $17 million or so the company paid the club every year for its prime advertising space, even as it slipped from Champions League contention to relegation from the Bundesliga, was enough to override any such qualms. The old line, trotted out yet again this week by Sergey Semak, the coach of another Gazprom-backed team, Zenit St. Petersburg, that sport and politics should not be allowed to mix was the only justification anyone needed.Schalke was fine with Gazprom’s name on its shirts and Gazprom’s money in its accounts, until suddenly it wasn’t.Martin Meissner/Associated PressUntil, Thursday afternoon, that is, when Schalke suddenly discovered its moral compass. Gazprom’s logo was being removed from its jerseys, a statement on the club’s website read, because of the euphemistically-titled “recent developments” in Ukraine. Instead, when its players take to the field against Karlsruhe this weekend — and for the foreseeable future — their jerseys will simply read: Schalke 04.It is, though, somewhat churlish to focus exclusively on Schalke. Better late than never, after all: The club has done what it can, in some small way, to highlight its objection to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. There are plenty of others who have yet to meet even that bar.Everton and Chelsea, for example, have significant financial ties to Russian oligarchs who were named by a British lawmaker this week as suitable targets for sanctions; or Manchester United, studiously quiet on its sponsorship deal with Aeroflot, the state-backed Russian airline, until suddenly dropping it Friday.Still, what do you expect, when the very bodies who are supposed to represent the game have been so acquiescent? UEFA has, at least, stripped St. Petersburg of this year’s Champions League final, something it has found easier than annulling its own, lucrative sponsorship agreement with Gazprom.And then, of course, there is FIFA. Oh, FIFA, whose president once accepted a friendship medal from Putin and claimed that the 2018 World Cup had highlighted how wrong the Western perception of the ruthless kleptocracy he presided over had been. On Thursday, that president, Gianni Infantino, did condemn Russia’s “use of force in Ukraine,” though there were times when outright criticism did not seem to come easily.Even placing those teams, those bodies under scrutiny, though, may still be a touch unfair. The idea that any of these institutions should be expected to have a cogent, considered reaction to a major, unfolding global crisis is, at heart, faintly absurd.The issues that have driven the world to this point, their underlying causes, their long-term ramifications, are way beyond not only the scope of their expertise — let’s go live, now, to Frank Lampard, for his take on the Minsk accords of 2014 — but the limits of their world.The Krestovsky Stadium, known as Gazprom Arena but no longer the host of this year’s Champions League final.Anton Vaganov/ReutersIf the British or American governments cannot muster a convincing, unified policy in response to Putin’s aggression, why should we expect Everton, a middling Premier League team whose main concern is not being relegated, to do so? Why should UEFA, an organization which seems to find it hard to stop people being actively racist at public events, be expected to take decisive action before the European Union and the United Nations? What core competencies does FIFA, stocked as it is by the self-interested and the chronically mediocre, have to understand the tectonic shifts in geopolitics?At what point did we decide that any of this was within soccer’s wheelhouse? At what point did soccer become a lightning rod for international diplomacy? Why would an issue this serious be refracted through the lens of something as inherently trivial as sport?The answer, of course, is because soccer wanted it this way. Or, rather, because this is a price that soccer long ago decided was worth paying, when it elected to pursue money and glamour and influence at all costs, when it chose to open its doors to anyone who wanted a part of it, regardless of their morals or their motives, as long as they were good for the money, when it allowed itself to be hijacked by those who saw it not as an end but a means, not as a sport but as a vehicle.Soccer has not just welcomed them all in — the politicians and the oligarchs and the tycoons and the nation states — but actively courted and feted and celebrated their contributions. It has transformed them from parasites, hoping to attach themselves to the world’s great, unyielding passion to serve their own interests, into saviors and heroes and idols, conferring upon them not just legitimacy but adoration.And it has done so because they have helped to turn the game into what the historian David Goldblatt has referred to as the greatest cultural phenomenon in history, a world of untold riches and unlimited promise, one that knows no borders and recognizes neither its horizons nor its hubris.That is not the worst of it, though. The worst of it is that it has sold not only its morals and its right to innocence, to simplicity, but a part of its soul to anyone who could afford it not for any grand vision of what it might be, of what it might do, but simply to bankroll the endlessly spiraling inflation of transfer fees and wages, to support an economy that is bloated beyond all recognition, one so engorged and distorted that it calls into question the very integrity of the sport itself.Soccer did not have to do any of that. It did not have to allow itself to be the field in which geopolitical rivalries played out, or the stage on which oligarchs sought power and prestige. It did not have to choose a path in which one of Germany’s grandest clubs, owned by its fans, was a pawn in the politicking around the construction of the Nord Stream II gas pipeline.It could, instead, have looked at its popularity around the globe and wondered how that might be protected from — rather than sold to — the speculators and the opportunists, how the clubs that comprise its fabric might be safeguarded rather than hawked by organizations eager to monetize it, the ones that might have designed rules to prevent a gold rush but chose simply to grab its pickax and start mining.But it did not, and so this is where it finds itself: stripping sponsors from its jerseys as the air raid sirens wail and the fighter jets scream low over the skies, way out of its depth and way beyond its limits, trying desperately to do what it can to make a stand, knowing full well that it is all far too little, far too late.A Fight Worth WinningJohannes Eisele/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt is extraordinary, really, that it has taken six years of negotiation and ill-feeling and controversy for U.S. Soccer to formally pledge to fulfill the simplest principle: that its men’s and women’s players should be paid the same amount of money — and given the same access to the same resources — to do the same job.That does not feel like an especially complicated issue to resolve. It certainly does not seem like the sort of issue on which anyone would willingly take the contrary position.It is not necessarily something that warrants the most lavish praise, then, that U.S. Soccer has agreed to a settlement that will see several dozen women, both current and former players, share $24 million, largely in back pay, in a belated attempt to right a historical wrong. But as noted elsewhere in this newsletter: better late than never.Russia-Ukraine War: Key DevelopmentsCard 1 of 3A new diplomatic push. More
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FIFA Considers Moving Its Commercial Business to U.S.
Soccer’s global governing body is giving serious thought to relocating its multibillion-dollar commercial business to the United States.Looking to expand its global footprint beyond its cloistered headquarters next to a zoo on the outskirts of Zurich, soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is studying the feasibility of moving its financial engine, the commercial operation that produces billions of dollars in revenues for the organization, to the United States.The possible move will be determined by technical factors including the suitability of locations on both coasts, the ease of acquiring work visas for overseas staff members and tax rules, according to an official with direct knowledge of the discussions who declined to speak publicly because a final determination had yet to be made. The operations involved represent a vital part of FIFA’s business: They oversee FIFA’s sale of sponsorships and broadcasting rights, which represent some of the most lucrative properties in global sports.Since the election of Gianni Infantino as its president in 2016, FIFA been looking at extending its footprint beyond its glass-and-steel headquarters on the east side of Zurich. It has already opened an office in Paris, where most of its staff involved in development and relations with its 211 member associations will eventually based.Officials are hopeful that relocating its commercial business to a major American city would help FIFA attract and retain key staff members, amid concerns that its current home is proving a hurdle in attracting talent. Local regulations require FIFA to employ a fixed number of Swiss staff members.FIFA officials toured the United States in September, visiting possible host cities for the 2026 World Cup.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressFIFA’s interest in decoupling itself from Zurich is also — in part — an effort to improve its reputation and loosen its ties with its troubled recent past in Switzerland, the country that has been its home since 1932.Several members of FIFA’s executive board were arrested in Zurich in 2015 as part of a sprawling United States Department of Justice investigation that revealed corrupt practices dating back at least two decades. That scandal led to the downfall of FIFA’s longtime president, Sepp Blatter, and most of the organization’s top leadership.A move to the United States would have been unthinkable for FIFA in the immediate aftermath of the arrests, since it might have put the organization’s officials, operations and financial accounts within the reach of the U.S. authorities. (Some former FIFA executives, possibly fearing arrest, have not set foot in North America since the scandal.) But now staying in Switzerland comes with its own issues.Infantino, who replaced Blatter as FIFA president a year after the raids, has faced a yearslong investigation into his relationship with Michael Lauber, Switzerland’s former attorney general. Lauber, who was forced out after revelations that he held private meetings with Infantino, was responsible for Swiss investigations stemming from the 2015 American indictment. Those inquiries have yielded few charges.The failure of the Swiss authorities to act in the corruption case has frustrated elements of FIFA’s current leadership, who have privately expressed incredulity at the inaction given the amount of evidence obtained in searches of FIFA’s headquarters. At the same time, the investigation into Infantino led to a furious response, with FIFA’s assistant secretary general branding it “a little grotesque and unfair.”FIFA’s effort to move parts of its operations away from Zurich are seen by insiders as necessary measures for an organization looking to move beyond working methods dating back several decades. The decision to relocate to Paris, for example, has offered officials in its development and member association departments easier access to Africa, a region over which FIFA has largely assumed complete control after a separate corruption scandal involving the president of the regional governing body on the continent.“Our aim of making football truly global also means that FIFA itself needs to have a more balanced and global organizational set up,” Infantino said when the Paris office opened in June.FIFA was established in Paris in 1904 but moved to Zurich in 1932 because of Switzerland’s location in the center of Europe, its political neutrality and because “it was accessible by train,” according to a timeline on FIFA’s website. In 2007, FIFA moved into its current headquarters building on a hill overlooking Zurich. The building, known as FIFA House, cost more than $200 million and has several subterranean levels, including the marble-floored, soundproof room where its governing council holds its meetings.Officials at FIFA remain undecided about how much of a presence the organization would keep in Switzerland, which — thanks to light-touch government oversight and friendly tax arrangements — has grown into the location of choice for international sporting federations. Lausanne, the home of the International Olympic Committee, actively recruits such organizations and has labeled itself “the Silicon Valley of sports.”Pushing for such significant changes is emblematic of FIFA under Infantino. A Swiss national, he has tried to institute major changes to the way both FIFA and soccer operate, with mixed results. He has enlarged the World Cup, an event responsible for more than 90 percent of FIFA’s revenues, to 48 teams from the current 32-nation format. But his efforts to force through other innovations and increase FIFA’s influence in club soccer have often fallen flat, and his current push to shift the World Cup from a quadrennial event to one staged every two years threatens a major fight with European soccer officials and even the International Olympic Committee.Moving to the United States would offer FIFA the chance to build out its commercial operation in a country that its officials feel has yet to embrace soccer at a level matching the sport’s place in other parts of the world. The timing would also allow FIFA to exert greater control over preparations for the 2026 World Cup, the first edition of the expanded tournament; that tournament will be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.But being closer to Wall Street and major American companies, some top FIFA officials contend, would also offer the chance to significantly increase revenues as well as find partners to finance new events and invest in the growing popularity of women’s soccer.As well as tapping into the potential commercial opportunities available in the world’s largest economy, being based in the United States also would offer FIFA another chance to show that it has moved on from its scandal-ridden past.FIFA has in recent years tried to mend its relationship with the U.S. government, and officials have been in regular contact with the Department of Justice, which has continued its probe into corruption in world soccer. Some of the fruits of those improved ties were made clear last month when FIFA and its two regional confederations most implicated in the 2015 scandal were cleared to receive more than $200 million recovered from companies and individuals. The Justice Department said the money would have to be administered through FIFA. More
