Arsene Wenger has betrayed us all
Whenever the cameras panned towards Gianni Infantino during the World Cup, you would see Arsene Wenger alongside the Fifa president or just behind, usually in dark glasses looking inscrutably cool.
Whatever excesses Infantino committed, however much he embarrassed himself, there was always Wenger to make sure everything did not get too much out of hand.
Now that everything in Fifa has got completely out of hand with the World Cup up for sale, maybe the man who in his years at Arsenal railed against the “financial doping” practised by Manchester City ought to say something.
Perhaps it might be time for Fifa’s director of global development to make a stand.
You might have a long wait. Rather like discovering that John Cleese thinks Rupert Lowe is his preferred politician, there is something profoundly depressing about finding Wenger in Infantino’s corner as Fifa prepares to flog the greatest competition in sport.
Wenger’s silence will feel like a betrayal to those who thought he was a guardian of the beautiful game.
But Wenger is a man who has, shall we say, always known his own value, a quality he shares with his old adversary Sir Alex Ferguson who until recently charged Manchester United £2m a year for being a club ambassador.
Being director of development for world football is rather more exacting than standing in a room and being Ferguson but it pays much more than £2m a year.
As Arsenal manager, Wenger was not against money in football, he was against the government of Abu Dhabi giving a lot of it to a club that were one of his direct opponents.
The president of the German Football Association, Bernd Neuendorf, said that the details of the project to sell stakes in the World Cup are so comprehensive that “it must have been discussed within Fifa for months, a year or even longer”.
Neuendorf did not know about it until he read it in the press, and he is on the Fifa Council, the organisation’s supreme decision-making body.
This was something that only those close to Infantino seemed to have been aware of and he and Wenger are very close.
Wenger was appointed directly by Infantino, and has long been part of his inner circle. He accompanied Infantino to Davos for the World Economic Forum as if he were the chief of staff to a head of state, which seems to be how Infantino sees himself.
When Infantino celebrated 10 years with Fifa, Wenger led the adulation.
Even when you thought he might speak out against a World Cup staged in Qatar in the middle of a European season by a regime that flagrantly abused human rights, Wenger said very little, noting only how teams like Germany, who had made political statements during the tournament, had not performed well.
Wenger enthusiastically welcomed the 48-team tournament. He has explicitly argued for a World Cup every two years, which the new venture capitalist stakeholders will surely press for because every time the money men become involved, the solution is always the same – more games.
At Arsenal, Wenger put player welfare at the heart of his management. Arsenal were the last major club to succumb to the idea of vast pre-season tours across America and Asia because sitting on planes for countless hours and playing matches in aching humidity while engaging in marketing stunts is no kind of preparation for an English winter. Obviously.
There is one part of selling the World Cup that he would also support. As head of global development, Wenger is one of the principal deliverers of Infantino’s vision to spread football around the world.
The aims are laudable. There will be $200m of direct investment and every one of Fifa’s 211 members will have an elite academy ultimately overseen by Wenger.
Young footballers across the globe, aged between 12 and 15, will be given training, equipment and, most importantly, an education. Who would argue against that? It also fits in very neatly with Infantino’s politics.
Every Fifa president wins power by promising to expand the World Cup. Sixteen teams under Stanley Rous, 24 under Joao Havelange, 32 under Sepp Blatter, 48 under Infantino. If you offer more places at the party, more countries will vote for you because next time it might just be them.
And every country has a vote. The Seychelles and Spain each have one. Cape Verde earned $23.2m from a World Cup they may not have qualified for unless Infantino expanded the tournament. Since this is many, many times their annual turnover, you can be sure where their vote will go at the next election.
Not every country can qualify even for the 64-team tournament which most assuredly is coming but every member country can be given an elite youth academy. Every Fifa member will be given a stake worth $40m if they vote for the proposal.
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If $40m is enough to clear the debts of the Football Association of Ireland, how many academies would that fund across the developing football world – assuming the money finds its way to the academies. It is an offer they cannot refuse.
To continue the theme of The Godfather, it might have been tempting to view Wenger as a kind of consigliere, gently reining in the excesses of the man at the top with a tap on the shoulder, Robert Duvall to Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone.
Until he speaks out, Wenger can be regarded as no such thing. He is an employee, a supremely well-paid employee but an employee for all that and one that can be relied on not to criticise his boss – not even after a few drinks at the Christmas party.
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