Have you met Gianni Infantino?
He’s the bald, Italian man who has hosted pretty much every European Championship, Champions League and Europa League draw for the last millennium.
He’s one of the four candidates vying to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter as the President of FIFA and he has some big plans.
Chief among those plans is an overhaul of the World Cup as we know it. His manifesto, released today, would expand the size of the World Cup from 32 teams to 40. We can all agree that any increase in teams is good news for Ireland.
There is also the possibility of bids for hosting the World Cup to come from ‘regional areas’ as opposed to countries – for example, in the case of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, matches could be held all across the gulf as opposed to exclusively in the host nation.
FIFA’s presidential election will take place on February 26, and Infantino is up against Jordanian Prince Ali bin-al Hussein, South Africa’s Tokyo Sexwale, and Frenchman Jerome Champagne.
Are any of them actually any less corrupt than Sepp Blatter? We’ll soon find out.
