Please Advise! Can the Soul of Sports Be Saved?

[Editor’s note: Steve Burgess is an accredited spin doctor with a PhD in Centrifugal Rhetoric from the University of SASE, situated on the lovely campus of PO Box 7650, Cayman Islands. In this space he dispenses PR advice to politicians, the rich and famous, the troubled and well-heeled, the wealthy and gullible.]

Dear Dr. Steve,

Last week FIFA president Gianni Infantino announced a plan to sell a 20 per cent stake in the international soccer governing body to private interests, including Joshua Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. After an overwhelming response that included a pledge by European soccer teams to boycott any future FIFA event, Infantino backed down and scrapped the proposal.

What does this tell us about the state of the sports business, Dr. Steve?

Signed,

Messy

Dear Messy,

There's little room for the romanticization of professional sports — it was already a mega-money industry before legalized sports betting came along to transform kids' games into a reliable means of blowing your child's college fund.

Canadian hockey fans got another kick in the teeth last week when Sportsnet, fresh off removing free hockey broadcasts from the CBC, turned around and sold Wednesday night NHL rights to Amazon Prime. From now on if you feel you must have hump-day hockey, you'll be subsidizing Jeff Bezos's closet full of fancy scalp polish.

But Infantino's fiasco should hold interest for people who do not give a fig for footy or sports in general. Infantino was widely expected to be unopposed in his bid for re-election next spring to the most powerful position in the sports world. Now he appears to be transitioning from president of FIFA to chairman of FAFO. Calls for his resignation are growing. With the FIFA scandal we are seeing the unexpected onset of sanity.

Could Infantino's own goal be a preview of coming events elsewhere? Like, just south of the border?

Holding the 2026 World Cup in the United States of Trump was the equivalent of licking a petri dish. Infection was inevitable. No vaccine, no mask can prevent the passage of presidential plague. Typhoid Trump is not just corrupt — he is a vector for corruption. Proximity to Trump reliably leads to cancer of the integrity. Right now, Gianni Infantino is looking terminal.

A disease does need to find a suitable host, though. And while Vancouver offered a warm welcome to global soccer fans, the FIFA president proved a perfect environment for a virulent case of moral rot. The symptoms were there when Infantino embarrassed himself and his organization by awarding Trump the FIFA Peace Prize, in the process earning for himself the inaugural Golden Bootlicker Award. (Since FIFA decided to trespass on Nobel turf, presumably Spain will soon receive the Nobel Prize for Soccer.)

The infection progressed when Infantino allowed Trump to intervene to reverse a disqualification for a U.S. player ahead of a knockout match with Belgium. Clearly, Infantino is a man with all the elastic principles required of a Trump ferret. He'd make a fine South Carolina senator.

It may have seemed that Infantino was just engaging in the usual spineless truckling that meaningful Trump interaction demands. But no. Infantino, it now appears, had caught something more serious. Watching Trump, seeing the near-complete impunity he enjoyed for depravity and despicable self-dealing, Infantino was apparently dazzled. Travelling among U.S. soccer venues, he seems to have entered that parallel universe — the Magical MAGA Land Beyond Consequences. Trumpyland — the slimiest place on Earth.

Infantino must have been inspired. It's traditional to return from overseas with souvenirs, and Infantino went back to Switzerland with a brand new playbook — plus some new pals in the extended Trump family circle.

Alas for Infantino, the American cesspool is a particular ecosystem. It involves an interplay of elements: the stream of lies and justification from Fox News and other right-wing media outlets, a hyper-partisan political climate and, most importantly, a thoroughly cowed and submissive Republican party whose elected members know opposition to Trump means political suicide. None of that fits into a checked bag, or even a FIFA private jet.

Unlike Trump, Infantino does not have the benefit of a terrarium full of invertebrates waiting to do his bidding. He certainly tried his best to recruit pliable allies — the FIFA president's plan involved giving big money to small member nations for soccer development, a promise that by pure coincidence might have created a quorum of minnows sufficient to vote the plan in. But minnows do not drive World Cup revenue. When the 55-member Union of European Football Associations, or UEFA, screamed bloody murder, Infantino's big-money scheme collapsed like a Trump meme coin.

It's almost as if a naked display of greed and bad faith can result in a rapid collapse of electoral credibility after all. Maybe, just maybe, America will catch a dose of FIFA fever.