FIFA; four letters and a whole lot of baggage.

To some it is an acronym synonymous with the corruption that has led us to this World Cup concluding in Qatar this weekend, the tainted processes, politics, power and greed. To others it is merely a computer game due to be rebranded as EA Sports FC next year. Hifu Facial Machine

Either way, FIFA has an image problem.

The governing body that is responsible for so much of international football and its development since founding in 1904 has become a magnet for bad publicity. There are stains it struggles to shift, no matter how much it tells the world it has moved on from those grubby days of Sepp Blatter.

Gianni Infantino’s bizarre speech on the eve of this World Cup did little to change the perception of this being an all-powerful body purposely ignorant to Qatar’s faults. On with the show, nothing to see here.

A World Cup final between France and Argentina, Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi, is the blockbuster denouement Infantino will have craved in the country he has chosen to make home. The biggest sporting event on the globe under FIFA’s banner. A billion watching on.

This is the day it has spent years planning, a moment that defines and funds its entire operation.

But what happens to FIFA when the show concludes? I mean, what does it really do?

This, after all, is a not-for-profit body that employs 815 people from its headquarters in the Swiss city of Zurich and made £6.2 billion ($7.5 billion) in revenue during the four-and-a-half-year cycle that concluded with this World Cup.

And it will keep growing. Infantino yesterday forecast revenues between 2023 and 2026 to climb to £9 billion ($10.9bn) ahead of the next World Cup in USA, Canada and Mexico. An uplift of almost 50 per cent.

Then there are the remarkable cash and asset reserves, which stood at £4.5 billion ($5.4bn) at the last count in March.

FIFA’s snowballing wealth is testament to football’s ever-expanding appeal and underlines the increasing responsibilities it now shoulders. This is not the organisation founded by seven European countries as the Federation Internationale de Football Association in Paris 118 years ago but it retains the same ambitions to promote a global game.

The question is how well is it currently performing?

The functions of the modern day FIFA can be best split into three categories: competitions, regulation and development.

It has other major responsibilities, like shaping the laws of the game as a stakeholder in the International Football Association Board (IFAB) and self-promotion through its new FIFA+ streaming service, but the nuts and bolts of its operation are three-fold.

The competition side requires no introductions. FIFA oversees the World Cup, the most watched and lucrative sporting event on earth, as well as countless others, including the annual Club World Cup, now confirmed for Morocco in February, and the Women’s World Cup, next due to be staged in Australia and New Zealand in July and August. There are also youth, futsal and beach soccer tournaments to be organised and staged.

How the hosts of these competitions are selected is an argument for another day but the commercial success of the World Cup is not in question. No event comes close for revenues and the sale of broadcast rights, effectively propping up the other major tournaments run by FIFA. Whether through organic accident or clever design, the sporting event all others would love to replicate has been created.

There is a solid argument to suggest FIFA has also gradually got its house in order when handling the regulations it oversees within the game.

FIFA’s Clearing House, voted through in 2018, was launched to “centralise, process and automate payments between clubs” and “promote financial transparency and integrity.”

FIFA no longer has a lengthy backlog of player disputes and wage disputes to address, with the previous regime struggling to cope. There is also a willingness to take on agents and reduce their influence and powers. Under Blatter there had been no appetite to regulate agents. Those attempts to cap agents’ fees, announced by Infantino in 2020, have now been confirmed.

It is a low bar but FIFA has undeniably made improvements. Perhaps not as many as the early years of Infantino might have promised but it has shifted into the right direction. The United States Department of Justice acknowledged as much in April last year when awarding £165 million ($200m) to the FIFA Foundation, money that had been retrieved from those found guilty of corruption during FIFA’s darkest days.

“Everyone sees FIFA as just a competition organiser and a governing body that presides over rules relating to those competitions but they forget that it also distributes more than $1bn (£820m) a year to its member associations,” explains James Kitching, managing director of The FC Sports Consulting and former director at FIFA.

“That’s a huge undertaking and responsibility. For the vast majority of its 211 member associations, the country’s football headquarters, training base, national manager, stadium, if they’ve got one, all their grassroots and education programmes, everything, really, is all paid for by FIFA.

“And when you think about the rules of the competition, you’re not just talking about the size of the pitch and offsides, you are talking about the international match calendar, the transfer system, agents, minimum governance standards. All these things must be universal for the competition to function and only FIFA can do that.

“FIFA gets plenty of criticism for not doing enough but the remission fund that the US authorities have granted to FIFA for cleaning up its act will go to pay for things like the safeguarding programme run by Joyce Cook. FIFA isn’t perfect but it does keep global football running and it is trying to redistribute some money from the rich to the poor.”

Kitching brings us to the third point of FIFA’s being; football development. That is where they like to champion themselves as a force for good in expanding the global game, plunging vast money into countries big and small.

In the current four-year cycle (2019-2022), almost £5 million ($6.1m) has been invested in each and every one of the 211 member associations, with an additional £800,000 ($974,000) given to smaller nations.

The sums will rise again ahead of 2026. FIFA say a total of £1.8 billion ($2.2bn) will be committed to development between 2023 and 2026, a sum that represents a seven-fold increase on the 2011-14 numbers. A talent ID fund, worth £160 million ($195m) a year, is also to be launched with ambitions to unearth gifted players at a young age.

This was Infantino’s big plan from two years ago. “Making Football Truly Global: The Vision 2020-2023” it was called. The laudable plans are to invest money into nations to help football participation grow, the next steps after what he called “successful reform” of FIFA post-Blatter.

FIFA Forward has helped countless member associations across the six confederations it oversees. Money goes here, there and everywhere. From Djibouti to Singapore, Cuba to Sierra Leone, all with the aim of providing facilities and raising standards. FIFA will point to this World Cup as a sign it is working. The five major federations each had at least one team progress beyond the groups (Australia is grouped with Asia in footballing terms), while Morocco became the first African nation to reach the semi-finals.

A renewed focus has also been placed upon the women’s game in recent years. Times have changed from Blatter’s suggestion in 2004 that female players could wear tighter shorts to heighten appeal. About £800 million ($975m) will have been invested in the global growth of women’s football alone during the 2019-2022 cycle. The expectation of Infantino, in time, is for football to become the most popular sport for men and women in North America.

Development, though, is also the area where FIFA’s critics believe it keeps falling short given their financial strength.

“That, I would say, is where they perform worst,” says one senior figure with in-depth experience of the FIFA machine. “At least compared to the potential.

“The reality is that they give the 211 member associations the same amount of money each. If you’re a tiny Caribbean island like Montserrat, you will get the same amount of money as India or China, which doesn’t make sense if you’re trying to develop the game. They can’t spend it all in some of the countries. It’s impossible.

“So much more could be done. If you hand out $2 million (£1.64m) to everyone you’re going to get some development happening but it’s not what it should be. FIFA is not geared up for development.”

FIFA, though, has a well-versed response.

“Under the leadership of Gianni Infantino, FIFA has significantly increased its investment in football development through its member associations, the confederations and regional associations,” said a spokesperson.

“From $328 million (£269m) in the 2011-2014 cycle under the Financial Assistance Programme, the figure rose to $1.1 billion (£903m) in 2015-2018 via FIFA Forward 1.0 and then to $1.7 billion (£1.4bn) in 2019-2022 through FIFA Forward 2.0. Investment under Forward 3.0 will total $2.2 million (£1.8m) in the 2023-2026 cycle, an almost seven-fold increase on the 2011-2014 figure.”

Now the cynics — and there are a number of them owing to FIFA’s recent history – would counter all that by pointing out what tends to come in return for financial support. All those tiny member associations receiving money arguably beyond their needs then have loyalty towards the president that sent it their way. In a presidential election, the smallest nation has the same one vote as the biggest.

It worked for Blatter across his 17-year reign and it is working again for Infantino, whose re-election will be unopposed next year. In FIFA-land, that James Bond bunker in Zurich, Infantino has no opponents of note. Little wonder he has raised the prospect of remaining in post until 2031.

And so to the final, most pertinent question: Is FIFA fit for purpose in 2022?

“Definitely not because it’s an autocracy,” says one senior figure with knowledge of the organisation, who spoke on the grounds of anonymity. “It’s not a properly structured organisation. The judicial bodies should be independent. FIFA say they are but they’re not.

“They’re probably more professional than under Blatter but they’re not any more independent. The development is stunted because it’s all about politics and staying in power. People like Arsene Wenger (FIFA’s chief of global football development) should be driving the whole development agenda but at the moment it’s set by the voters, the small FAs around the world who want as much money as possible.

“The overall structure is the same as it was under Blatter, with one guy making all the big decisions. That structure is antiquated. Infantino is a brilliant administrator, very hard working. But there are no critical voices around him. There’s no one offering alternative views to his.”

FIFA is undeniably in a better place than its nadir in 2015. That was when seven then-current FIFA officials were arrested at the Hotel Baur au Lac in Zurich, scuttling out behind a bed sheet after arriving in town for FIFA Congress.

The stained names of Chuck Blazer, Jack Warner, Jeffrey Webb, Jerome Valcke and Blatter are long gone from the corridors of FIFA but though the faces have changed, the same structure remains in place.

That ensures Infantino remains the figurehead making all the meaningful calls. There was a point made yesterday that this remains Infantino’s first four-year term after finishing off Blatter’s term between 2016 and 2019, ensuring he is eligible to stand again as president in 2023 and 2027. Few governance experts will cite a 15-year reign as being beneficial to any organisation and the presence of Fatma Samoura as secretary general, a pliable figurehead with no previous experience in sport, effectively makes Infantino an executive chairman.

The next big call for FIFA, of course, will be over the hosts of the 2030 World Cup. There is a growing expectation that Saudi Arabia will be favourites in a joint bid with Egypt and Greece. That would do little to quieten the voices that say money talks loudest with FIFA.

Not that Infantino cares too much. He will have heard the Danish FA’s president Jesper Moller speak eloquently about considerations to leave FIFA last month owing to its institutional ills but in the next breath accept that Infantino retained the support of 207 of the 211 member associations.

“We have been clear about this for a long time. We have been discussing it in the Nordic region since August,” said Moller, who saw the Norwegian FA hold a vote over a boycott of the Qatar World Cup last year.

“I’ve thought it again. I imagine that there may be challenges if Denmark leaves on its own. But let us see if we cannot have a dialogue on things. I have to think about the question of how to restore confidence in FIFA.”

Infantino is not unduly worried about immediate threats but there are long-term considerations. Although UEFA is one of six regional confederations under the FIFA umbrella alongside CAF (Africa), AFC (Asia and Australia), CONCACAF (North and Central America), OFC (Oceania) and CONMEBOL (South America), the European governing body’s powers have grown greater than those at the top of the tree.

With the Champions League and Europa League as annual jewels in a crown that sits atop the European Championship every four years, UEFA currently makes almost as much in one year as FIFA does in four.

That has brought envy and led to ill-conceived ideas such as a biennial World Cup. Expanding the FIFA Club World Cup, a title currently held by Chelsea, to 32 teams gathering every four years has been confirmed to begin in 2025.

Infantino, who spent a decade working for UEFA, knows all about the financial lure of the elite club game and sees this, despite the reservations of domestic leagues, as a timely opportunity to plant another FIFA flag. A Women’s Club World Cup is also in the pipeline.

These are all ideas to increase revenue. Or build the game, as FIFA would say.

The pursuit of more money has also led to a parting of the ways with the computer game that has shaped a generation of youngsters’ love of football. “Money plays a critical role in most negotiations,” accepted EA Sports vice president David Jackson earlier this year. FIFA’s branding will not be carried in the 2024 version.

FIFA, who were handsomely remunerated for the sale of those licensing rights, will need to plug that gap elsewhere but the money tree has many branches bearing fruit. The sale of broadcasting packages for this World Cup alone are thought to have come close to £3 billion ($3.6bn) .

FIFA estimate that 87 per cent of their net revenue after sales costs will be pumped back into football by the end of this cycle, all with the intention of doing right by the game it oversees.

That is not enough to rectify the perceived flaws of this century-old institution, though. FIFA might do plenty right but in positioning its biggest show in Russia and then Qatar, refusing to entertain protests or politics, it is impossible to feel it ought to be doing more.

(Top photo: Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

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