FIFA Claims Biennial World Cup Will Stop African Migrants From Drowning

Summary

• FIFA president pushes for world cup every two years
• Says plan will prevent African migrants from drowning at sea
• Gets criticized for leveraging migrant deaths to push his plan

Gianni Infantino, the president of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is pushing for the World Cup to be held once every two years instead of the current format which is once every four years.

Infantino is pushing an agenda known as the ‘Future of Football’ as he plans to take football to greater heights under his leadership.

News media have covered extensively the dangers that migrants from Africa have to endure when they look to migrate to Europe by jumping on just about anything that floats, putting their lives at risk to create a new life in Europe.

These migrant journeys from Africa usually don’t end very well but still hundreds of Africans are willing to take the risk every year.

While European governments look for ways to stop this from happening, Infantino believes that he has found a strategy to fix this. He spoke at the Council of Europe, which is a trans-national organization that focuses on human rights issues and told them that they can prevent African migrants from drowning at sea by hosting the FIFA World Cup twice every year.

His logic behind the statement was that football brings hope to millions of people worldwide. African migrants need to find hope and hosting the World Cup twice each year will give them more hope and discourage them by taking a risk to migrate and drown at sea.

Infantino Criticized Over Strange Remarks

Infantino’s remarks received a lot of flak on social media as well as some prominent names in football such as Ronan Evain, CEO of Football Supporters Europe. Evain called out Infantino for trying to sell his megalomaniac football plan and leveraging the death of African migrants to do so.

Tony Burnett, CEO for Kick It Out said those remarks were completely unacceptable. He said FIFA was a multi-billion dollar organization and if they wanted to create hope in Africa they could use their existing funds to do so.

When the criticism started to pile up, Infantino said that his remarks were taken out of context and he did not mean that hosting the World Cup every two years could save African migrants from drowning.