According to Bild, FIFA President Gianni Infantino's plan to privatize the World Cup has drawn strong criticism from former president Sepp Blatter.
Blatter wrote: "The close relationship between the FIFA president and the US president is reaching a new financial level, which will seriously hurt football. No one has the right to sell our sport."
Blatter himself was not reserved about the commercialization of football, but the extent of his actions was probably beyond even his own expectations.
The background to this is the exposure of Gianni Infantino's plans. The FIFA president intends to bring in corporate investors to push for the privatization of the World Cup. He essentially wants to sell the World Cup finals, a tournament eagerly anticipated by fans worldwide every four years, to the highest bidder.
However, some netizens reacted with considerable irony to Blatt's remarks. One replied, "Sepp, we need you back. Your corruption was much better hidden." Another added, "Sorry, old man. We didn't know what we were losing back then. Your corruption was far more sophisticated."
This also mentions Blatter's less-than-honorable end to his tenure as FIFA president. In December 2015, he was banned for eight years and fined by FIFA's Ethics Committee—an organization that does exist. The punishment was later reduced to six years for "abuse of power." Back in 1998, when he was first elected president, then-German Football Association president Egedius Braun and others accused him of vote-buying and lobbying.
