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Fifa has been accused of providing an “open door to fraud” and allowing political influence to cast doubt on the integrity of the World Cup in a stinging rebuke by the Council of Europe’s secretary general.
In an open letter published to coincide with Sunday’s final, Alain Berset also called for a new integrity framework to be built before the 2030 tournament, which is mainly being staged in Europe, and warned that Fifa was embroiled in a crisis involving money and power.
Berset referenced the scandal surrounding Fifa’s decision to shelve the suspension of the USA striker Folarin Balogun and made apparent allusions to comments made by the Paraguayan senator Celeste Amarilla about Kylian Mbappé and by the former Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy about the France team.
“The Fifa World Cup 2026 has raised question after question,” Berset wrote. “A sanction suspended under pressure, within days, with no reasons given. The authority of referees called into question. Racist abuse of players, some of it from elected officials. Betting on every pass, every card, every corner. The celebration will end tonight. The questions will not.”
It is a significant intervention given Fifa and the Council of Europe signed a memorandum of understanding in 2018, which remains valid. The agreement was struck to strengthen their work together on a number of topics, including “human rights, integrity and good governance in sport”. Open criticism of one partner by another is vanishingly rare.
Berset took aim at Fifa’s deal with ADI Predictstreet, which became the World Cup’s official prediction market partner in April. “Betting has moved from the result of a match to moments a single player can produce without changing the score,” he said. “A bet is won by making others lose. It is an open door to fraud. And this World Cup has opened the door wider.”
In further reference to the lifting of Balogun’s ban by Fifa, which occurred after a phone call to its president, Gianni Infantino, by his US counterpart, Donald Trump, Berset said: “When the rules bend under pressure, every result is open to doubt.”
Infantino has said the decision to revoke Balogun’s ban was taken independently by Fifa’s disciplinary committee “based on the applicable regulations and the specific facts”.
Berset, who is Swiss, proposed a “working dialogue that starts tonight” to begin the “urgent work of strengthening the integrity of sport” before future World Cups. He referenced work by the Council of Europe – which is the continent’s intergovernmental human rights organisation – in creating a binding treaty to keep fans safe three months after the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985, as well as further legislation set up to tackle doping in athletics and match-fixing.
The letter comes a week and a half after 72 members of the European parliament wrote to the 27 EU-based football associations asking for an investigation into Infantino’s involvement in the Balogun case. It pointed to alleged breaches of political neutrality and suggested Fifa had contravened its own code of ethics.
It does not appear likely that Uefa, European football’s governing body, will formally take the matter further. In June, 50 members of the European parliament wrote to Infantino and the Fifa council requesting an investigation into the awarding of the Fifa peace prize to Trump.
Fifa was contacted for comment.
This past week the Guardian revealed that more that 200 of Fifa’s member associations have formally backed Infantino’s attempt to be re-elected for a fourth term in March.
