00:01The FIFA World Cup final kicks off tomorrow.
00:05Set your alarm between Argentina and Spain.
00:07But off the pitch, FIFA President Gianni Infantino
00:11is facing what is widely seen as an integrity crisis.
00:15Yeah, football has long been known as the beautiful game.
00:17One that brings the world together.
00:19But questions are growing about power, politics
00:21and who really benefits from the world's biggest sporting events.
00:25We're joined here in the studio by Tracey Holmes,
00:27host of the Sports Ambassador podcast. Tracey, nice to see you.
00:32Has FIFA got a credibility crisis and integrity crisis at the moment?
00:36Well, it depends who you listen to.
00:38And I think it's also important to point out that during this World Cup,
00:42I've actually noticed a response around the world,
00:45but also here at home in Australia.
00:49People who don't normally follow sport,
00:52people who don't normally pay any attention to the World Cup
00:54have been tuning in in significant numbers.
00:58And I think that's really interesting
00:59because the state of the world at the moment,
01:01you know, people are kind of over the diversity, the split,
01:05the politics and everything else.
01:07And they have really been enjoying the World Cup
01:09in a way that they have never done previously.
01:11So that's interesting.
01:13When you come to FIFA, there's always politics.
01:16If you're an organisation that is looking after 211 countries in the world,
01:20or member associations,
01:22that come from completely different political backgrounds,
01:25different cultural setups,
01:27there's always going to be politics.
01:29So when we talk about the crisis that is engulfing FIFA at various times,
01:34normally the crisis is driven by Europe.
01:38And we need to be important when we talk about the whole world
01:41because often we're only referring to ourselves as Europeans or Western media.
01:47So it's a very big media story.
01:49But generally speaking, Gianni Infantino still has a lot of support
01:54of the member associations.
01:56Of course, scandal is not new to FIFA.
01:58When you look at the history of FIFA, how does this period compare?
02:02Well, look, people will measure things in different ways
02:06and it depends on where they put their focus.
02:08I think one of the biggest things to realise,
02:10if you're FIFA or if you're the International Olympic Committee,
02:15you know, people pile a lot of responsibility
02:19on these sports governing bodies.
02:22They expect FIFA to be able to do things that governments cannot,
02:26you know, in government relations one to the other
02:28or cultural problems or political issues or differences in many different facets.
02:35We expect FIFA to solve all of these problems.
02:37We expect FIFA to uphold human rights values
02:41where country to country we can't demand that from our politicians.
02:45And so there's a lot of responsibility
02:47and it provides an international global stage.
02:51And so people can pile on whatever they like to pile on.
02:54But, you know, in effect, we're expecting a lot from a sports organisation.
02:59Yeah, but, Faisi, governments have checks and balances.
03:01There are all sorts of things in place to make sure that corruption doesn't happen.
03:07Of course, we know that it does.
03:08But where are the checks and balances for FIFA?
03:11They are all supreme.
03:13Well, no, the checks and balances come from their member associations.
03:16And I think sometimes that's another thing we forget.
03:19You know, it's made up of 211 member associations.
03:21They can vote in or out, whoever they like,
03:25according to what is important to them.
03:27And it might not be what's important to us.
03:29It might not be the way we do business.
03:31But according to those 211 member associations,
03:35and we've heard in the past week or so,
03:37that 200 of them still support Gianni Infantino,
03:40who is the current president,
03:41and will most likely re-elect him
03:44because they've offered their support to him at the next election,
03:47which comes up in March next year in Rabat in Morocco.
03:51So what they're looking at is how are we benefiting
03:55and who's going to help us benefit most.
03:58Benefiting usually means more money
04:00because we can invest money in various ways,
04:04and sometimes there's not checks and balances
04:06within those individual countries,
04:08and they spend the money not in ways they said they would.
04:12But then you've got, on the other hand,
04:14a story that most people will remember from this World Cup,
04:16Cabo Verde, coming from Africa,
04:18who have benefited from the last round of funding from FIFA
04:21to build eight pitches inside their country that they didn't have,
04:25enabling them to play qualification matches
04:29for the first time in their own country,
04:32in front of their own people,
04:33and then qualify for the FIFA World Cup.
04:35So I think it's important to look at the total picture
04:39rather than slices of the picture,
04:41and we all measure those things in different ways.
04:44Something that received a lot of coverage during this World Cup,
04:46a controversy around the US president making an intervention
04:50to demand FIFA review the US striker's red card.
04:54What impact has that had?
04:56That's had a huge impact,
04:58and that's where a lot of the people,
05:00you know, the media, English media, Western media,
05:02European football nations as well, some of them, not all of them,
05:07are demanding that, you know,
05:09there be an ethics investigation into this.
05:12Fair Square, the NGO, has asked the IOC
05:15to do an investigation as well,
05:17because they see, or they want to know exactly what happened.
05:21There is no evidence, as such,
05:23that Infantino, after that call from President Trump,
05:27phoned up his, you know, disciplinary committee
05:30and said, this is the result we need.
05:32There's no evidence of that.
05:34Infantino has said that never happened
05:36and they're an independent body.
05:38That is probably where an ethics investigation
05:40could help uncover some of those missing pieces to that story.
05:43A lot of people are saying, you know, widespread corruption.
05:46We don't have evidence of that yet,
05:48and it's important to get that evidence
05:50if you're going to prosecute that case.
05:52Tracy, thank you very much.
05:54Thank you very much.
05:54Thank you very much.
05:55You
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