00:01I think we have to take a closer look at all of this
00:04and sort of dive into the rubbish if you want to
00:07and dig around for what's really there.
00:10There's a real culture clash that has happened in this event.
00:13We've got the way sport is run in Europe.
00:16And let's not forget that many of the very successful,
00:19the most successful leagues in the world come from Europe
00:22and many of the clubs that play in them work under the same model
00:26that Gianni Infantino was actually advocating for FIFA,
00:30and that is private equity investment.
00:34So it all seems a little bit weird and there's a bit of a pile on.
00:38There's lots of politics at play here.
00:40But obviously, when you look at the top leagues in the world
00:43and what they return in a financial sense,
00:47they all come out of America and they all run on this sort of model.
00:50So clearly in the lead up to this World Cup,
00:53Infantino has looked at that and thought,
00:55OK, there might be some room here for further growth inside FIFA.
00:59But there comes a point, I think, where some people have jumped on and said,
01:02well, is further growth really necessary?
01:04We're already a juggernaut.
01:06At what point does it become obscene?
01:09So it's America versus Europe.
01:11And this is what's playing out here,
01:14as well as the internal divisions in politics.
01:16We can't discount the fact that there's personality politics at play here.
01:21And as soon as the name Kushner was associated with it,
01:24that is, Joshua Kushner, who is the brother of Jared Kushner,
01:28who is the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump,
01:32even though they vote on different sides of the political spectrum,
01:37already it had an aroma about it, a stench about it,
01:42that many people just went, no, no, not on.
01:44We're not doing business with that family for these particular reasons.
01:48And so I think all of that has played into it as well.
01:51I mean, the sorts of political divisions we're seeing around the world,
01:56geopolitically, in many, many circumstances,
01:58we are now also seeing played out in the biggest sport in the world, football.
02:05Well, I think this was an arm wrestle from the start.
02:08You know, FIFA trying to assert its authority.
02:11Gianni Infantino has overseen a period of growth for the game.
02:15We know that.
02:15The rise of women's football as well cannot be discounted.
02:19The number of teams expanding inside the FIFA World Cup,
02:22and he wants to expand that further.
02:24So that has been his mission from the start.
02:26We've seen that play out.
02:28But what we've seen is UEFA fighting back,
02:31saying we've been a traditional power
02:33because we dominate the top competitions in the world
02:35for all those reasons we outlined earlier.
02:38And you're not going to take over that easily
02:40because they're worried about losing some of that power.
02:43They're worried about losing control of the calendar.
02:46They're worried about losing control of their players.
02:48And so all of this feeds into it.
02:51You just have to look at every organisation,
02:53every personality and say,
02:55OK, what is their agenda?
02:57What is their motive?
02:58And what is in their best self-interest?
03:00And you can kind of get to the bottom of every story
03:03by looking for that.
03:05Look, he's been a magician before.
03:08We're yet to wait and see.
03:10At the end, before this World Cup,
03:11he had 200 members supporting him
03:14out of 211 voting members.
03:18This is going to put a dent in that.
03:19But who knows what he can salvage
03:21between now and the election,
03:24which is in March next year.
03:26It's looking untenable given the wave
03:29and the narrative that we're witnessing,
03:33especially in Western press and Western media.
03:35But, you know, you can never discount anything here.
03:39There'll be backroom deals being done everywhere
03:41and we'll see what comes out of it.
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