Gianni Infantino | The master of ceremonies Premium

Once seen as a reserve captain navigating the stormy waters at the world’s most powerful sporting body, the FIFA chief has now dropped anchor fully and is sailing ahead with his expansionist agenda

In the summer of 2015, when world football’s governing body FIFA was embroiled in a series of explosive corruption scandals with president Sepp Blatter at the helm, Gianni Infantino was leading a rather charmed life as general secretary of UEFA, European football’s leading organisation.

The Swiss was more widely known as the man who conducted the draw ceremonies of various UEFA competitions, including the crown jewel among club events, the Champions League. Where FIFA can often mimic the raucous atmosphere that’s seen at pre-bout weigh-ins, Infantino’s role required him to present a flat yet genial face without eliciting from the audience the usual gasps and whoops.

In less than a year, however, Infantino, after a series of dramatic events, rose to become the president of FIFA. Blatter, who had resigned for presiding over a dishonest structure but was in charge on an interim basis, and Michel Platini, the then UEFA president who was expected to succeed Blatter, were both banned because of corruption allegations. The stoic master of ceremonies was now in a position to smilingly stare down the world.

It is perhaps this technocratic image of Infantino, his sophisticated demeanour and fluency in as many as five languages (English, German, French, Italian and Spanish) that landed him arguably the most powerful post in all of sport.

A few months earlier, Swiss police had raided FIFA officials over corruption charges and an investigation was launched into the controversial allotment of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosting rights to Russia and Qatar, respectively. The bribes and kickbacks were alleged to be worth more than $150 million, forming a part of an international investigation spanning three decades.

In the years since, more than half of the 22-member executive committee that had decided the World Cup hosts for 2018 and 2022 have been discredited for getting mired in financial irregularities of varying degrees. Infantino was considered enough of an outsider to not have his hands sullied by these misconducts, and enough of an insider with the knowhow to run giant sports governing bodies, who could clean up the mess.

A lawyer and a career sports administrator, Infantino was also not the stereotypical FIFA president — there have only been two fulltime heads in the four decades before Infantino — possessing Machiavellian traits that are essential to play the politics of patronage that’s commonplace in most global sporting institutions.