Telegraph: Football triumphed over Infantino's greed and arrogance

The crisis surrounding FIFA's latest project represented a defining moment in the history of football, as the game recovered its "moral compass" in the face of what Britain's "Telegraph" newspaper described as the "greed" of FIFA president Gianni Infantino.

Writer Oliver Brown put it bluntly: last week was hell for Infantino, "whose grand scheme to carve up the World Cup promised benefits only for private investment funds and for his personal bank balance, but it was a happy week for everyone criticising his greed".

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This time the bombshells came from within FIFA's own corridors. American Carlos Cordeiro, Infantino's former adviser, tore into his secret scheme with associates of US President Donald Trump and branded it a "bad deal". FIFA chief operating officer Kevin Lamour then said staff had "been deceived".

What happened, the "Telegraph" believes, "reflects not only the deep contempt that UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin holds for the way his counterpart in Zurich operates, but also the moral outrage stirred by Infantino's arrogance".

Football rarely speaks with one voice. Yet the arrogance of the Swiss official, whom the paper described as boastful and lacking in charm, intelligence and empathy, united 143 countries in a state of disgust, with the number still growing.

"A boost for football's principles"

Laura McAllister, Ceferin's deputy at UEFA, said: "In many ways, this was a boost for football's principles. It is a vindication... football comes out of this stronger".

Even after UEFA, CONCACAF and his contacts at Kushner's "Thrive Eternal" company abandoned him, the British newspaper added, Infantino kept floundering in an attempt to revive the project with other financiers, shameless to the very end.

The roadmap for ousting Infantino remains complicated. What happened, though, is a cause for relief, because football, having been stirred by one major scandal, has rediscovered something of its moral compass.

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