Scottish FA president Mike Mulraney, all sunshades and smiles, the cock of the walk, looked like he was lapping it up when perched beside Gianni Infantino in the posh seats during last month’s meeting with Morocco at the World Cup.
Yet, despite the conflict of interests that appears to come from him also sitting as chairman of FIFA’s finance committee, the national association he leads must make it clear in today’s UEFA discussions over Infantino’s grand plan to sell off the global game that they are prepared to join with other European nations and boycott the next edition in 2030.
That’s quite conceivably what it is going to take to stop this larcenous endeavour to flog off stakes in FIFA’s top competitions to the highest bidder.
Although the Czechs have already broken ranks and welcomed Infantino’s offer of countless millions to speed up football’s well-established descent into unmitigated greed and profiteering ten-fold, the other 54 members of UEFA — especially the leading nations — must use today’s get-together to generate unity and form a plan ahead of what looks like being a bitter battle to preserve what’s left of the soul of an already torn and tattered game.
Scotland have to be in on that. And they have to be prepared to go the whole hog if talk of a boycott of the next World Cup, as it must, pops up on the agenda.
SFA president Mike Mulraney must navigate a conflict of interest to do what is right for football
Infantino knows what it takes to procure votes, especially with FIFA Congress lined up for next March.
That’s what was, and is, behind talk in recent times of extending the next tournament in four years’ time to a ridiculous and cheapening 64-team set-up.
Smaller nations among FIFA’s 211-strong membership are swayed by that. They’ll always be swayed by Johnny Baby as long as he is delivering increased chances of access and prize money.
And it’s easy to see why mid-ranked nations such as Scotland might also be tempted by his promises of £30million — £15m of that delivered immediately — if they say ‘yes’ to selling out by his deadline of September 19.
Those figures alone are going to make this whole monstrous project difficult to beat when so many countries who could only dream of hauling in that cash will be participating in a vote that, according to reports, only needs a simple majority to go through.
That is, unless the major European nations go nuclear, refuse to take part in the World Cup altogether and have other countries such as ourselves four-square behind them.
Six of the eight quarter-finalists in North America were European. What does it do to a World Cup if the likes of Spain, France, England and Germany aren’t there?
European nations need to stand firm on this, and it’s where we need to consider another of the hats Mulraney wears. He is also first vice-chairman of UEFA’s legal committee.
SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell, who has a spot on FIFA’s Men’s Football Stakeholders Committee, is also fourth vice-chair of UEFA National Teams Competitions Committee.
They have their fingers in all sorts of pies and, although survival in the murky world of football politics is rarely assured by sticking your head above the parapet, they need to take a stand on something as serious as this.
Mulraney clearly enjoyed himself in the posh seats alongside Infantino during the World Cup
The World Cup just gone was appalling in so many ways. Donald Trump intervening to have Folarin Balogun’s suspension suspended, so many teams and players talking of corruption with real reason, rip-off ticket prices, in-game ad campaigns dressed up as hydration breaks.
We know the game’s gone, but that doesn’t mean it’s OK to agree to push it off the cliff completely and allow private equity to come in and start calling the shots.
It will all do wonders for FIFA’s finance, no doubt. But the SFA have to come out today and make their position crystal-clear.
Their statement will be all the better, all the stronger, if Mulraney’s name is on it. He needs to let Scotland’s footballing public know whose side he’s on.
