Uefa Calls Boycott and No Confidence in Infantino

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production. The consumer in this story is the supporter who buys the ticket, the subscription, the replica shirt, and asks in return only that the competition he watches be honestly arranged and competently governed. Let us ask whether Uefa’s declaration of no-confidence in Gianni Infantino, and its call for boycott of Fifa’s arrangements, serves that supporter - or serves the association that has issued the challenge.

Uefa’s grievance, as reported, concerns the governance of Fifa under Infantino: a complaint about process, about consultation, about who was asked and who was not. This is not a trivial matter, and I will not pretend that governance is beneath a philosopher’s notice, for I have always held that the rules under which men are permitted to compete matter as much as the competition itself. If Fifa’s president has concentrated decisions that once required broader assent among confederations, that is a grievance worth stating plainly. But notice what has not yet been stated plainly: nowhere in Uefa’s declaration is there mention of the price of a ticket, the value of a broadcast subscription, or the calendar congestion that leaves a player exhausted and a supporter watching a diminished match. The dispute, as put before us, is a dispute between governing bodies about the governing of governing bodies. It is, in the fullest sense, a producer’s quarrel.

Here the sympathy test earns its keep. Stand for a moment in the position of the family in Marseille or Manchester who has already paid for next season’s tickets, who has organised a Saturday around a fixture list neither Uefa nor Fifa consulted them about, and who now hears that the two great confederations of world football are, at the executive level, no longer speaking with confidence in one another. What does this news mean from where that family sits? It means uncertainty about which competitions survive, which calendar holds, and whether the tournament they have planned their year around becomes a bargaining chip in an argument about seats on a council. Uefa may be entirely correct that Fifa’s governance has drifted from confederative consent toward something more centralised. I do not doubt the sincerity of the grievance. But sincerity of grievance is not the same as service to the spectator, and a boycott is, whatever its justification, an instrument that withholds supply from the very consumer whose loyalty funds both organisations.

The interest of Uefa is not identical to the interest of the supporter, any more than the interest of Fifa is. Both are associations of producers - of matches, of tournaments, of broadcasting rights - and both have, over recent decades, shown themselves willing to expand fixture calendars, multiply competitions, and extract greater sums from the same finite pool of attention, all while insisting each expansion served “the game.” When such bodies now quarrel over governance, the supporter should ask not only who is right about the council seats, but whether either party, in its account of the dispute, has once mentioned him. I have read the declaration attributed to Uefa with some care, and I find in it concern for confidence, for process, for the standing of confederations - and no word of the price of admission or the value received for it.

This is not an argument that Fifa’s governance is beyond reproach, nor that Uefa’s complaint is manufactured. It is an argument that a contest between two producers’ associations, each with a concentrated and organised interest, is being narrated to the public as though it were a contest on the public’s behalf. The diffuse interest - millions of supporters, each with a small stake and no seat at either table - organises itself far less effectively than either confederation, and so its interest is routinely assumed rather than consulted. Consumption is the purpose of the game; governance is merely its scaffolding. When the scaffolding-builders quarrel loudly enough to threaten the performance, the honest question is not who wins the boardroom vote, but whether anyone in that boardroom still remembers why the stadium was built at all.