Preposterous FIFA president Gianni Infantino plumbs new depths with his embarrassing Saudi charm offensive… the Sepp Blatter days feel halcyon now, writes IAN HERBERT

Just when you thought Gianni Infantino could not look more preposterous, he was back at a lectern on Wednesday, embarrassing himself and humiliating his organisation.

He invited Fifa delegates to clap their hands ‘near their heads’ to endorse Saudi Arabia’s unopposed 2034 World Cup bid, so that they would be visible on their screens at the Zoom conference confirming the hosts. ‘Wonderful,’ he enthused, evading any scrutiny or awkward questions about the absence of a transparent, competitive bidding process by staging this ‘acclamation ceremony’ from behind a screen.

One commentator suggested that the 54-year-old might at least have anointed the Saudis by using a clap-o-meter in the style of Hughie Green on Opportunity Knocks, though that would have telegraphed some level of dissent. The clap was brief and indistinct enough to obscure any refuseniks among the 150 or so blurry delegates, sitting in front of their webcams on the screen behind him.

In the days of Sepp Blatter – which feel halcyon now, despite all the allegations of bribes, criminality and the general, noxious swamp – these announcements occurred in real places, to which actual people were invited. The award of the last World Cup to Qatar – a mistake, Blatter reflected before the tournament after a lot of delegates were said to have had their palms greased – was at least dramatic.

But there was no suspense about this one because Infantino had concocted things in a way that saw off all possible opposition. A secret deal had knocked Europe, Africa and South America out of contention, by giving the 2030 World Cup simultaneously to Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Don’t ask.

A confederation that holds the World Cup may not host either of the following two. So that just left any country in Asia and Oceania, which might be capable of deciding, within the unprecedented 25-day bidding deadline Infantino set, whether it could organise and fund a 48-team, 104-match tournament. Saudi Arabia, which is helpfully bankrolling the vast, irrelevant Club World Cup which Infantino sees as a personal legacy, just happened to have such a plan to hand.

Infantino put on a bizarre presentation – which utilised a Zoom conference call – as he announced Saudi Arabia as hosts for the 2034 World Cup 

In the days of Sepp Blatter, which feel halcyon now, announcements occurred in real places

Infantino, who had previously seen his attempts to take the 2030 tournament to Saudi frustrated, has visited the country more than any other in the past five years, despite the organisation he leads having no office there. Even in the midst of the pandemic, he ignored advice against non-essential travel to perform in a ceremonial sword dance around the palaces of Diriyah, for a Saudi PR video.

He skipped FIFA’s high-profile video gaming tournament in Liverpool in August to launch Saudi’s Esports World Cup. These trips and many others preceded FIFA launching the 2034 bidding process.

Asking Infantino about his Riyadh intimacy has been challenging, given that he has not held an open news conference this year. That Zoom seclusion on Wednesday meant there were to be no inconvenient questions about FIFA’s technical assessment of the Saudi bid, sneaked out on a Friday night a few weeks ago. It gave the ‘bidders’ a record rating of 4.2 out of 5, despite Riyadh’s summer temperatures of 40°C.

Many are hoping for the best and cleaving to the idea the scrutiny on Saudi that comes with host-nation status might improve the plight of workers in a way it did not in Qatar – where the disgusting contempt for the immigrant workers on whose backs the tournament was built resulted in many deaths.

We await news of a turning point for the family of Dina Ali Lasloom, a young Saudi woman neither seen nor heard from since she was intercepted and forcibly returned to Riyadh in 2017, after fleeing a forced marriage and attempting to seek asylum in Australia. Human Rights Watch has tirelessly raised her case. It is one of many.

It is hard to imagine Infantino lobbying on her family’s behalf. His attention now turns to the 2026 World Cup, which will be staged in the United States, Canada and Mexico. The investigative sports website Josimar last week published evidence that FIFA have paid school tuition fees for one of his daughters at an expensive private school in Florida. FIFA said this is a ‘standard compensation package of senior executives’. Don’t expect an explanation from the man himself.