You couldn’t get a cold bottle of Bud on the ground if your life depended on it. But the staff must be pouring some serious gentleman’s measures, way up there in the presidential suite.
Because if Gianni Infantino wasn’t still half cut when he addressed the world’s media on Saturday morning then FIFA ’s godfather must have been drunk on power alone. Infantino set off on a narcissistic rant for almost an hour and the more he spoke the more absurd, the more insulting and the more utterly outrageous this tone deaf monologue became.
If you didn’t hear it all then here’s an edited recap. If you are even slightly uneasy or uncomfortable with the fact that the World Cup has been bought and sold with Qatari oil money, then you are part of the problem. If you struggle to comprehend how more than 6,000 migrant workers could have perished - having slogged for a pound an hour i like victims of a modern day slave trade - then there’s a good chance you’re an Islamophobe.
And if you can’t quite get your head around why the LGBTQ+ community should not be deserving of the same human rights as the rest of us then it’s almost certainly because you’re a filthy, rotten racist. How dare Infantino play such a despicable and divisive card? How dare he sit there pointing proudly to the FIFA badge on his blazer as if his organisation is some paragon of virtue and all that’s decent and proper?
When the truth of the matter is that football’s governing body has dumped this entire s***show on itself precisely because it is corrupt to its very core. How dare Infantino attempt to dress it all up in any other way and how dare he jab a finger of blame at anyone who feels remotely queasy at the grotesqueness of what we are being force fed in the name of the game we treasure so deeply?
He should be ashamed of himself for the damage he is wreaking on football’s global reputation. But, instead, somehow Infantino has managed to convince himself that he is actually the victim in all of it.
In one part of his bizarre and disgusting sermon Infantino attempted to offer a condescending pat on the head to same sex couples at risk of breaking Sharia Law during their time in Doha. Effectively he said, ‘Don’t talk to me about bullying and discrimination - I had to grow up as a kid with freckles and red hair!’.
Oddly, he declined to say in what part of Switzerland being ginger is deemed to be a criminal offence punishable by the death penalty or seven years behind bars. But let’s not split hairs, eh baldy?
The top and bottom of it is that Infantino is coming across as a man with the same almighty Jesus complex which meant the previous president couldn’t be marked with a blow torch. Given how that all ended - with a raid from the FBI - the new man ought to be doing everything in his power to present himself as the anti-Blatter.
Instead, Infantino is Sepp on steroids. “I want to discuss some of the topics that have been - rightly or wrongly - put on the table over the last few months.” was how he opened up. Hold on a second. Rightly or wrongly?
This was a clear insinuation from the outset that anyone who dares to mention that thousands of migrants died in order to build this vanity project in a desert, is some sort of trouble maker or insubordinate. And it went downhill from there.
“Today I have very strong feelings - I can tell you that,” was how he put it as if he was about to do us all some incredible favour. Today I feel Qatari. Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel a migrant worker. And I feel this - all this - because of what I’ve been seeing and what I’ve been told. I didn’t read it myself - otherwise I’d be depressed - but what I see brings me back to my own personal story.”
Narcissistic? Who, me? Infantino went on to describe himself as the son of immigrant parents. A victim of bullying and racism from an early age.
“What do you do then?”, he went on, “You lock yourself in your room, you cry. And then you try to make some friends.
“You don’t start accusing, fighting and insulting - you start engaging. This is what we should be doing.”
Honestly, where do you even start with this self indulgent drivel? Why on earth did Infantino feel the need to make such a pious and pompous address on the eve of a tournament which is already making the skin crawl?
He went on to say that, as Europeans, we ought to spend the next 3,000 years apologising for what we’ve done over the course of the previous 3,000 years ‘before starting to give moral lessons to people’. It’s probably worth pointing out here that, in 2020, FIFA withdrew a corruption complaint against Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the Qatari president of Paris Saint-Germain.
The following year Infantino moved his family to Doha where they reside to this day - just 4,499 miles away from his office in Zurich. But, again, let’s not quibble over mere details.
Infantino did get one thing spot on during his 57 minute long diatribe when he said: “You know better than me the magic of football, as soon as this ball rolls people will concentrate on that. Because that’s what people want.”
It began yesterday when Infantino’s adopted homeland opened up against Ecuador. Hardly a blockbuster but, all things considered, a blessed relief nonetheless. The real magic will come when Argentina and Lionel Messi get started.
Who knows? If this tournament should provide the little man with his greatest, crowning moment then maybe the finer details of Infantino’s spectacularly ill-thought out address will be lost in the sands of time. But the overarching insult should never be forgotten.
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