By Simon Evans
MIAMI, Feb 12 (Reuters) - As the princes, sheikhs and
diplomats who would rule world soccer filed into a Miami airport
hotel it struck an incongruous tone, a world away from the
opulent jamborees of popular myth.
There were no gilt thrones to hand, nor velvet curtains
hanging heavy. Instead, a small group of around 50 men - the men
who will help elect the next FIFA president - settled down in
rows of cheap seating.
This was global soccer politics, austerity style.
With FIFA having suspended payments to CONCACAF, the
governing body for soccer in North and Central America and the
Caribbean, the delegates accustomed to a five-star life made do
with meal vouchers and glasses of water in the lobby.
The champagne-fueled days of life under former president
Jeffrey Webb of the Cayman Islands, now facing charges of fraud,
money laundering and racketeering conspiracy in the United
States, must have seemed very far off.
Certainly, this extremely rare glimpse of life at the heart
of soccer politics was an eye-opener. Not, though, for the
reasons the select few journalists admitted to the normally
sacrosanct chamber, had anticipated.
For decades, journalists have been locked out of the
gatherings of FIFA - global soccer's governing body brought to
its knees by corruption.
A total of 41 individuals and entities, including many
former FIFA officials, have been charged with corruption-related
offences in the United States. FIFA also faces a parallel Swiss
investigation.
Its president Sepp Blatter was banned from soccer for eight
years in December for ethics violations over a $2 million
payment FIFA made to European soccer boss Michel Platini in
2011. Blatter, who says he has done nothing wrong, is appealing
the ban.
Its last general secretary, second in seniority only to
Blatter, was banned for 12 years on Friday for misconduct over
the sale of World Cup tickets, abuse of travel expenses,
attempting to sell TV rights below their market value and
destruction of evidence.
Big sums, big stakes, big personalities.
You might expect gatherings of the kingmakers of the world's
richest sport to be high-octane affairs.
And with America enthralled by the entertaining spectacle of
a real presidential election campaign, it was impossible not to
wonder if there might not be some of the same fireworks in
Miami.
But Gianni Infantino is not Bernie Sanders and Sheikh Salman
Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa is certainly no Donald Trump.
The first sign that this meeting of four of the five
candidates for president might not be a drama of rhetoric,
accusation and counter-accusation, came when Sheikh Salman took
the podium behind that familiar foe of discourse -- the
powerpoint presentation.
CHAMPAGNE OUTSIDER
Sheikh Salman had been mistakenly introduced by a CONCACAF
official as "The Crown Prince of Bahrain" but this was certainly
more of an audience with the Sheikh than a debate.
Salman, like all the candidates, has been jetting around the
world meeting voters, and he appeared tired as he read a dry,
monotone speech.
But FIFA elections aren't won on public speaking skills --
if they were Frenchman Jerome Champagne would be favourite and
not the outsider.
A former French diplomat, Champagne showed he had certainly
absorbed plenty during his studies in the late 1970's at the
elite Institute for Political Studies in Paris.
He hit his favoured theme - addressing the imbalances in
football between rich and poor clubs and nations - early and
hard but, speaking fluently without a script, he also offered
some lines straight out of the playbook of 'real politics'.
"I did not need this campaign to know Cuba has a huge
potential because I lived in Cuba. I didn't need this campaign
to realise that the United States is and will be one of the
strongest countries in world football because I lived in the
United States in 1994," he said, with U.S Soccer president Sunil
Gulati and Cuban FA chief Luis Hernandez in the audience soaking
up every word.
If Champagne offered worldly experience and egalatarian
vision, Infantino brought things back to the more familiar
terrain of FIFA politics - money.
"FIFA'S LAST CHANCE"
Infantino offered a massive boost in resources paid out from
Zurich to the federations declaring "It is your money, FIFA's
money is your money, the national associations' money" and
promising that jobs in Zurich would be given to people from the
region.
"Your people will be in the FIFA administration," he said.
There may have been echoes in those promises of Blatter's
tried and tested electoral strategy but it was a well-delivered
punchy message that will likely have done no harm to the
shaven-headed Infantino, who has already won the backing of the
seven Central American countries.
Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan played to a different
sentiment, assuring the audience their confederation were not to
blame for FIFA's crisis and were in fact "victims".
That raised some eyebrows, given the last three CONCACAF
presidents have been indicted on various corruption charges by
the U.S. Department of Justice, but before the delegates could
feel too comfortable in their new-found victim status, Ali had
veered dramatically to a doomsday scenario.
The election was "FIFA's last chance" he said, and the
organisation could be wiped out if they chose, on February 26,
the wrong man to lead them.
But just as the evening came to life with that apocalyptic
prospect, it was all over and delegates shuffled off to the
lobby and the bar.
There was a little fare for the conspiracy theorists as
Champagne sat locked deep in intense conversation with Prince
Ali on the first floor lobby while downstairs Sheikh Salman and
Infantino, once rumoured to have cut a deal for this vote,
relaxed in each other's company.
All very collegiate then but with several former colleagues
awaiting trial, the corruption scandal is never far away from
the minds of soccer officials in the region.
As if to underline that, but by pure coincidence, earlier in
the day, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who has fronted
the FIFA probe, was just a few miles away meeting with a Miami
police department.