Football Daily | Scrapped proposals, statement wars and the ongoing Infantino furore

6 hours ago 16

ANOTHER LONG WEEKEND

Here we go again. And, no, we are not talking about the start of the new Scottish Premiership season or the preliminary round of the Carabao Cup – although that Tranmere v Rochdale shootout was a cracker. Yes, after a week of talk about money, greed and Donald Trump’s son-in-law’s brother, the hot topic around the water cooler on Monday was again Gianni Infantino and, more specifically, the English and Welsh FAs’ decisions to row back on their support of a stalling ship. Along with Finland, they’re the first of Uefa’s 55 members to withdraw their letters of support for next year’s Fifa overlord elections.

By the time Football Daily hits your inboxes, there could be a flurry of other nations frantically clicking unsend on those endorsement emails – more than 200 had their flags planted on Terra Gianni just a matter of weeks ago. This U-turn has us harking back to the hazy days of the €uropean $uper £eague, when the Premier League’s super-elite turned their backs on the super-project one by one. Instead of a handful of club statements and Petr Cech trying to calm protestors on Kings Road, now we could be looking at hundreds of withdrawals from federations across the world. Who will go next? Norway? Japan? Would Gianni pick up the phone to the Oval Office if US Soccer decides enough is enough, maybe to try and get it to reverse the decision? Or at least suspend it until next year.

Either way, the threat of a World Cup boycott is over – for now – after Fifa scrapped its proposal to sell stakes in its tournaments to private investors in the early hours of Saturday morning. It was half past midnight in the UK when a statement “attributable to the Fifa president” appeared on its website. That followed a statement called “Clarifications on Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE)” at 4am the night before that doubled down on the plans. It’s not exactly reassuring that such major dealings and decisions are being pondered, seemingly by one man, in the dead of night – but then again, these could be learned behaviours after all.

Statement wars continued with Uefa’s response on Saturday morning, which read: “We cannot keep going on like this with secret schemes on fast track timescales, cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game.” That dubious is doing a lot of work there. Uefa added: “The current Fifa leadership has not only lost Uefa’s confidence, but also that of many other members of the football family.” The first member of the football family out of the traps on Monday morning – once it had given the Cymru Premier’s opening weekend time in the spotlight – was the Welsh FA. It withdrew that precious letter of support for Gianni and proclaimed: “Failing to put the best interests of football first is a failure we cannot accept.” Football Daily waits with bated breath to find out what the next statement will say. The Premier League, after all, is still three weeks away.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Some worried about health problems or being unable to attend because of bad weather, as well as people who frequently travel for work. They are terrified and all asking the same question: will our season tickets be taken away?” – La Provincia, Como’s local paper, says it has received dozens of calls and emails from concerned supporters after the club said it will revoke season tickets from fans who fail to attend four home matches, under a series of new rules.

I write to you with my deep regret on hearing about the death of the heroic and granite-made Franco Baresi. Two moments stand out to me, both off the pitch, and show what a great man he was. The first was when Arrigo Sacchi, the Milan manager, dropped his intensity in training, fearing he was overworking the players; Baresi convinced Sacchi to up it instead for the sake of the team, with spectacular results. The second was an older Baresi reflecting on his 1994 World Cup final loss to Brazil, which he appeared in 25 days after knee surgery. Rather than lamenting his lot, having missed a penalty and lost the final, Baresi instead recalled watching the 1970 final between Italy and Brazil, only the second game he had seen on TV. The first game was the West Germany v Italy semi-final, where he recalled watching the players who ‘to me, they were Martians’. He said: ‘I would never have thought 24 years later, at 34 years old, I would have the possibility to play in that same game, the final, against Brazil, the same team. It was a dream that came true.’ Rest in peace” – Nick Kinsella.

I was wondering if Gianni Infantino might revist his Big Sale Opportunity by allowing smaller, club-level contestants from less lucrative leagues to participate in a seriously revamped World Cup, replacing their boycotting national sides. For instance, from the lower leagues of Scottish competitions. Mainly to render possible the wonderful hypothetical headline result of the last match of the (?) 2038 edition: Fifa Forward Final fiasco … East Fife 4, Forfar 5” – Russell Richardson.

Steve Bennett’s comment on Newcastle United’s new kit (Friday’s Football Daily letters) made me think of West Bromwich Albion’s similarly ‘bar-coded’ Premier League strip from the 2020-21 season, at the end of which they were relegated. Newcastle may have to hope that isn’t an omen” – Derrick Cameron.

If you have any, please send letters to [email protected]. Today’s prizeless letter o’ the day goes to … Russell Richardson. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here.