Gianni Infantino faces the last months of his third term as president of FIFA involved in the storm of formidable proportions that was unleashed this summer when his secret plan to put a part of the Soccer World Cup up for sale became known. Never before had so much opposition from confederations and federations been expressed in public, culminating this Tuesday with Norway's complaint to the FIFA Ethics Committee. In this panorama, the former Swiss soccer player of Spanish parents Ramón Vega, 55 years old, has reappeared, who in 2015, in 2019 and in 2022, before the congresses that elected Infantino, was stating that he wanted to compete for the highest seat in soccer. As he also did this time.
Vega announced this Tuesday through a long eleven-page manifesto his intention to fight with his compatriot at the congress to be held on March 18 next year in Rabat. The former player with a past in his country's national team, in addition to Tottenham, Watford, Cagliari and Glasgow Celtic, has until November 18 to present written support from five federations, the point that eluded him in his previous attempts to crystallize a candidacy. "I already have that. Once we are officially inside, we can talk about who they are. If the federations want to say it themselves before, it is their decision. I am not going to say it, because I have to protect myself," he says in a telephone conversation with this newspaper.
In the document that he distributed this Tuesday, he especially remembers his last attempt in 2022, “which ended in difficult and deeply questionable circumstances.” The Swiss candidate avoids going into more details in the interviews, but in the dossier he even uses the word “blackmail.”
What he did explain in the interview was the evolution he has undergone in these 11 years of trying to reach the point of being an option as an officially recognized candidate: "They have been a learning experience of what happens behind: politics and everything else. That knowledge has made us better than ten years ago, when perhaps we were naïve."
He has changed and believes that the system of relationships and balances around the bodies that govern football has also evolved: "During all that time, people had no courage. They were afraid, because no one had support or encouragement to speak and change things. That has changed a lot in these ten years thanks to us, because we have not stopped: we have continued talking and dialoguing," he says.
Vega is convinced that this time it will be different. He believes that two decisive factors come together: the background noise of recent years and the explosion of this summer. "What happened in the last World Cup is not the only thing that is not right, but something like this needed to happen. People have seen the truth and are fed up. There is much more talk about money than about football, and people have seen that this cannot continue like this." Above all, due to the failed project to sell part of the World Cup to investment funds. "It is the most serious thing that has happened in the history of football, morally and ethically. And above all because of how it was done, which is the important thing: one thing is to have the idea and another to do it behind the backs of your colleagues. But it has also brought to light everything that, after ten years, we already knew was inside. It was operated like that and no one was interested. They knew it, but they were silent."
The former soccer player, whose career was later dedicated to finance and club consulting, includes in the document some more points that have triggered the widespread reaction against Infantino: "Accumulating $6 billion in reserves instead of distributing these resources equitably among the federations for the development of soccer; interfering with the red card rule during the World Cup; the scandalous prices of World Cup tickets and an autocratically imposed peace prize. These are not issues. isolated. They reflect the deeper concerns about governance that we already raised in 2022,” the text reads.
He says that he is especially concerned about the commercial decisions that kept millions of fans away from the World Cup: "The price of tickets is a scandal. They talk about the NFL and the NBA, but those leagues are not global. The World Cup belongs to everyone, and everyone has to be able to go, because without fans football does not exist. It is an abuse that a father who wants to go with his wife and two children to see Spain has to pay almost 20,000 euros. It is crazy. Those who take care of football are those who pay 20, 50 or, at most, 100 or 200 euros.”
He also wants to clean up the calendar so as not to squeeze the players so much, and above all to modify the governance system: "The president must have authority, but not the ultimate authority. There must be integrity within and a functioning that is much more democratic than autocratic. Underneath there must be a very democratic structure in the decisions", for which he proposes a kind of committee of players, coaches, clubs and leagues that participate effectively in decision-making.
In the midst of the storm, Vega believes that his time has finally come to, at least, be a candidate: "I am a former soccer player and I know the system and governance of soccer at an international level, but from a very neutral position: I am not from the system, I am from the game, and that is important. If they say they want to change and reform, now there is no excuse not to do so."
