Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin has accused FIFA president Gianni Infantino of using “convenient words” to disguise an attempt to sell part of football’s future, declaring: “The emperor is naked.”
Speaking at the European Football Clubs General Assembly in Copenhagen on Tuesday, Ceferin criticised Infantino’s abandoned plan to sell a stake in FIFA’s commercial rights to private investors.
He drew on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes to challenge the language FIFA had used to defend the proposal.
“Almost 200 years ago, he wrote The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Ceferin said.
“We all know the story. An emperor is persuaded that he is wearing magnificent clothes, clothes which he is told only the foolish or unfit cannot see.
“His court goes along with it until a child simply says aloud what everybody can see. The emperor is naked.”
FIFA was approached for comment.
Infantino’s FIFA Forward Enterprise project would have established a FIFA-controlled commercial subsidiary with rights linked to competitions including the men’s and women’s World Cups and the Club World Cup.
Private investors would have been permitted to acquire up to 20% of the new entity.
Infantino presented the scheme as a way of generating additional funds for football development. He also said it would be subject to a democratic consultation involving FIFA’s 211 member associations.
The proposal was shelved after widespread opposition, but Ceferin directly disputed the terms used to describe it.
“Perhaps the moral of the story is convenient words cannot change uncomfortable realities,” he said.
“Now world football has heard some very convenient words recently. Development, democratization, consultation, words used in fact to describe the opposite.
“Selling part of football’s future does not become development because you say it’s development.
“Putting a fait accompli in front of national associations does not mean democratisation, even if you call it democratisation. However big the check is.
“And secrecy does not become consultation because you call it consultation.”
Ceferin asked club executives to consider how they would respond if a senior official secretly negotiated away control of their “crown jewels” without the knowledge of the board, players or supporters.
He described a situation in which the agreement was almost completed by the time those groups discovered what was happening.
“What would your board do?” he asked.
Ceferin then outlined another hypothetical example, involving the same official creating an award for a politician. Soon afterwards, the politician would make a phone call, after which “the rules are not the same anymore”.
“How many times would this have to happen at your clubs before the world says ‘enough’?” Ceferin said.
“Well, my friends, I think it’s time to say enough.”
He concluded by accusing unnamed decision-makers of changing rules when they became inconvenient, shutting out people who were supposed to have a say, and treating football’s future as “just another bargaining chip”.
Reuters
