IIn an increasingly complex world, it’s always good to have numbers that can simplify things for us. One person, who makes it crystal clear where he or she stands and what they stand for, can be the light in the darkness that helps you navigate today’s turbulent waters.
That’s why I’m so grateful to Gianni Infantino. The man is the ultimate guide to geopolitics and a signpost for anyone confused by the moral labyrinth in which they live. Whichever way he points, you can be sure you’re going the opposite way.
Take Russia’s continued exclusion from international events such as FIFA tournaments and the Olympic Games. The effectiveness and implementation of sports bans and boycotts may seem like a near-impossible riddle, open to debate by wiser heads than ours. Then this week you hear the president of FIFA say that he wants the Russian ban to be lifted because “it has only created more hatred”. And you remember that in December he awarded a peace prize to a man who immediately captured a Venezuelan president and threatened to invade Greenland and attack Iran.
So it is useful to remember the inverse nature of the times we live in, as well as the cowardly servility of those who run some of the most powerful sporting organizations in the world. Because otherwise it could be very difficult to resist the plausible arguments for Russia’s return to international competition, especially now that they are going back and forth between football and the Olympics.
A day after Infantino’s comments, International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry issued a coded message to the same effect, stressing that sport should be a “neutral ground” where athletes can “compete freely, without being held back by the politics or divisions of their governments.” According to the statements, it registers about as much shock value as Lucas Paquetá’s return from West Ham to Brazil.
On the surface, you can’t argue with the idea that athletes from different countries and cultures should be encouraged to form relationships across the political barriers that divide them. Indeed, the world must recognize its shared humanity. And this was the same argument for awarding Russia the 2014 Sochi Olympics, just before Vladimir Putin turned it into an opportunity for systematic, state-sponsored doping, a crackdown on LGBT rights and, oh yes, the annexation of Crimea.
Coventry has been vocal about the Olympics’ commitment to EDI, so presumably welcoming Russia is a big indication of its equality, diversity and inclusivity agenda. After all, it is no one’s fault if he or she was born in a country with a belligerent authoritarian regime. Unless they are the child of an immigrant from the United States, in which case it is largely their fault and they deserve to be separated from their parents and held captive.
As for Infantino, he just wants everyone to know that sports bans don’t work, which is clearly why Russia has been pushing so hard for him to lift theirs. Poor Gianni, he just wants everyone to get along. He still has the Order of Friendship that Putin awarded him in 2019, after Russia hosted the World Cup the year before. And what kind of friend would you be if you abandoned someone just because they invaded a neighboring country?
One of the stranger things the sport encourages us to do — along with standing en masse in the winter cold and shouting obscenities at people whose shirts are a different color than ours — is asking us to take it seriously. We outsource our moral judgment to the quasi-religious sense of neutrality. We believe that because it contains and concentrates our most competitive, survival and even violent instincts within a 100 meter radius, it elevates us above our baser instincts and takes us to a higher level.
On the field, everyone is supposedly equal, even if they adhere to codes and behaviors shaped by European countries when they were still stealing other people’s land for the good of humanity.
And now that sports has been commercialized into a mega-industry, there has been a correlative inflation of spiritual – or humanistic, if you prefer – meaning. And it remains that way, even as his own fixation on growth tips the balance of his purpose – from making money to function, to functioning to make money. The Olympic Games remain one of the greatest shows on earth; but you can admire the efforts of the athletes this month in Milan while remembering that even since the low point of Salt Lake, bribery and tender rigging continues to haunt the organization that organizes it.
As for FIFA, one of the most lucrative non-profit organizations in the world, its recent history of corruption does not require a letter of introduction – although a group of whistleblowers and academics provided one last year. According to the report, the organization is even worse managed than a decade ago, when its officials were arrested for fraud, extortion and money laundering.
In the meantime, they have actively eroded their own values, whether anti-discrimination, solidarity or human rights. They continue to give World Cups to countries where homosexuality is punishable by death and ban LGBT+ advocacy on the field. As for the exploitation of migrant workers during the build-up of the World Cup in Qatar, in 2024 FIFA rejected the advice of its own committee to accept its share and help compensate them.
The ultimate proof of the hollowness of FIFA’s values, of course, is the downright creepy gold trinket that Infantino presented to Donald Trump instead of the Nobel Prize his dear friend wanted. A man standing in front of an ugly naked man and telling him that he is wearing the most beautiful clothes. Let us keep this in mind when the same man confidently tells us how playing youth football against Russia can help mend a geopolitical rift that threatens the stability of the entire planet.
The soft power of the sport is congealing in the hands of the so-called leaders. Actual leadership requires people who are willing to say things that the powerful, the wealthy, and the perpetrators of crimes do not want to hear.
This week, Pep Guardiola has spoken passionately about the horrors of conflict against innocent people, from Ukraine to Sudan to Palestine. The IOC and FIFA would rather not do that. You can’t trust politicians to do the right thing, says such a silent, neutered moral. But here we can promise you that we will not do anything at all.
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