Fifa\u2019s president hopes to sell stakes in the planet\u2019s most watched sporting event. In the wider interests of football, he must be resisted<\/p>\n
Like a sporting Dr Pangloss, Fifa\u2019s president, Gianni\u00a0Infantino, would like to persuade football followers that they are living in the best of all possible worlds. Maddeningly for him, many disagree. On Monday, Mr Infantino published<\/a> a 15-page Instagram rant in which he bemoaned the \u201chate and false rumours\u201d in circulation during the recent men\u2019s World Cup. White House interference<\/a> over a crucial refereeing decision, prohibitive ticket prices<\/a>, unnecessary but lucrative hydration breaks<\/a>; it was all, as his best friend in politics, Donald Trump, would say, \u201cfake news\u201d.<\/p>\n But where the president of world football\u2019s governing body sees haters, others see lovers of the game rightly concerned over where he is taking it. On Tuesday, Fifa confirmed<\/a> that it hopes to sell stakes in the World Cup and other tournaments to private investors who may include Joshua Kushner, the brother of Mr\u00a0Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared. The investors would buy into a new $20bn company<\/a>, Fifa Forward Enterprise, which would sell all of Fifa\u2019s commercial rights, including ticketing, and take charge of \u201coperational delivery\u201d of World Cups.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fifa\u2019s president hopes to sell stakes in the planet\u2019s most watched sporting event. In the wider interests of football, he must be resisted Like a sporting Dr Pangloss, Fifa\u2019s president, Gianni\u00a0Infantino, would like to persuade football followers that they are living in the best of all possible worlds. Maddeningly for him, many disagree. On Monday, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76711\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}