“Among the statements of support for the FIFA president Gianni Infantino, there is competition to be the most craven. In a congested field, the Argentinian Football Association, which is very keen on an expansion to a 64-team World Cup in 2030, may have just nosed ahead. ‘We address you, dear President,’ it wrote in a public statement issued on Thursday, ‘and through you to the FIFA board, to express our support for the management carried out during the last 10 years, which had as its main axes the development of football throughout the world and the institutional solidity based on a clear, stable and transparent governance model. These pledges have now come from nations in Africa, Asia and both Central and South America, and are similar enough in tone and structure to have come from a template. They have all addressed Infantino with the same reverence, loudly applauded him for abandoning his private-equity scheme, which would have seen a portion of FIFA’s business sold to external investors, and then praised him for a style of leadership — clear, stable, transparent — that he stands accused of not showing. Infantino is being praised for having to abandon a plan that was conceived in the dark, but then exposed against his will by the media. It might be one of the only times in recent history that someone has drawn a standing ovation for being forced into an embarrassing U-turn. Strange? No, this is football, where cognitive dissonance is a survival skill. These are less gestures of support, more sacred oaths at the feet of a monarch. The lack of dissent is startling. …”
NYT/ATH (Video)
Telegraph – Exclusive: Gianni Infantino’s ‘lover’ was paid off by Uefa

Mr Infantino in Colombia on Friday with the governor of Valle del Cauca, Dilian Francisca Toro, and the president of Colombia’s Football, Federation Ramon Jesurun