FIFA presidential candidate Gianni Infantino’s plan will satisfy investors but be a disaster for players and fans.

If you haven’t heard of Gianni Infantino, he’s the bald guy who turns up to present the Champions League draw, tries to crack a joke in ten different languages and is equally unfunny in all of them. And now he’s stepped in in place of the suspended Michel Platini to run for FIFA President.

Anyway, his campaign is floundering, badly. Unless something drastic changes, in a month’s time football will be run by either a member of  Bahrain’s brutal royal family or Jordan’s slightly more benign, but still pretty brutal royal family. It’s almost enough to make you forgive Sepp Blatter.

I stress, almost.

As I said before Sepp Blatter resigned, there is absolutely no desire among the majority of FIFA members for a return of power to Europe. Michel Platini’s charisma may have got him over the line before, but now he is gone the majority of football nations will likely look away from any UEFA insider, and any ethical issues with having an oppressive Middle Eastern monarch in charge are of zero consequence to them.

Because of this, Mr Infantino has played one of the few cards he has left, region-wide tournaments.

“Fifa should investigate the possibility of organising the World Cup not only in one or two countries but in a whole region, so enabling several countries to enjoy the honour and benefits of hosting the World Cup,” he says.

Whether or not the 2022 World Cup goes ahead in Qatar, nobody at FIFA is stupid enough to pull a stunt like it again. It did for Sepp Blatter and very nearly brought the whole empire to the ground.

So Infantino’s plan is the perfect way for FIFA to have its cake and eat it. Small and oil-rich kleptocracies can still host World Cup matches without all the negative publicity that comes with giving them a whole tournament and some of the poorer members, whose votes are crucial, avoid returning to the much-resented situation under Sir Stanley Rous, where only the more developed and traditional football powers were able to host tournaments.

What’s more, FIFA members know Infantino is sincere because he has already granted thirteen different countries the right to host Euro 2020, with a Quarter Final to be staged in Azerbaijan.

So under this plan, FIFA would be happy, investors would be happy and the media would be less unhappy than it currently is. But with players travelling further than they do for Champions League games, nobody will ever again be able to complain about international football losing stature to the club game. And that’s before we even mention what it means for fans.

Let’s imagine, for example, England and France meet in the Euro 2020 Quarter Final in Baku. With fans already fatigued and out of pocket from travelling all over Europe for the rest of the tournament, supporters of both teams will probably number in the tens, rather than even the hundreds.

Say hello to the future of international football everyone. If it’s not a dictator calling the shots entirely, it will be football’s top nations playing in a tournament nobody wants to qualify for, in front of a stadium of people who couldn’t care less who wins, solely for the purpose of pleasing one.