Football is, fortunately for those who are passionate about it, but also sometimes unfortunately for those who live and work in the business, a topic that everyone seems to have an opinion on. It is discussed in bars, in the street, amongst friends but it is also a thorn in the side of those who have to deal with the poor management side of the business. Alan Tomlinson is a humanist, historian, sociologist, former football player in his years at the University, referee and coach. He is one of those authorized voices when it comes to debunking the good and the bad of a business that continues to expand, and has stood out as a prominent investigative figure for more than 30 years and the scourge of FIFA and its leaders during their most turbulent years.

We have taken advantage of his visit to the Johan Cruyff Institute where he spoke on the Master in Football Business in partnership with FC Barcelona, to ask him about his vision of the management of FIFA throughout history; about those hectic years and  how FIFA can evolve in the hands of Gianni Infantino. We also discussed the power of the clubs and the need for transparency as well as how we consume football has changed and what skills future generations will need when they take up positions of management in football.

 Could you please tell us briefly about your research work on football?

Most of my research has focused upon a mixture of the cultural history of football; sometimes in a particular national context, such as the English league, but also about international football politics really, and especially the history of FIFA. I began writing about the history of FIFA in the middle of the 1980s, and there were some French scholars who’d written a little bit but it was a really wide open field, to be honest. And therefore, I’ve enjoyed doing a lot of original research on how FIFA evolved, where it came from, how the power structures changed, how it affected the growth of the global industry of football. And that’s consistently what I’ve done, along with a colleague John Sugden, who has done some of the books with me. I’ve written five books on the FIFA question and on World Cups and a lot of articles to do with specialist aspects of the history of people concerned with FIFA.

What are your views of the current state of the football business worldwide?

Well, it’s at a remarkable moment, to be honest, because it’s become so global that its expansion seems at times to be rather limitless. What it’s really done is it’s changed the economic base of the game and, in association with the media and the growth of different types of media, it’s brought the game to new corners of the world you would not have dreamed of before. It’s got a dilemma, actually, which I’m sure we could talk about a little bit later. But the dilemma is really: What is the focus of people’s interest in the game? Is it the club? Is the history of a region? Is it the nation? Is it really the Champions League or the World Cup? And depending on that, of course, is it men’s football or women’s football?

“Football has become so global that its expansion seems at times to be rather limitless”

You have researched and published about FIFA for 30 years years. What is your view about what happened in Switzerland?

In Switzerland, in May 2015, it was a moment when a ‘ticking time bomb’, to use a metaphor, went off. Because for many years, a number of us had been writing about corruption at the highest level of FIFA in the administration, possibly collusion at times and careless administration you might call it, but also clear corruption by people very near the top. And for a while the authorities did nothing. But what happened in Switzerland in 2015 is that the Swiss authorities, in many respects emboldened, or certainly provoked almost by the FBI and the United States Department of Justice, really took action against what I’ve tended to call the FIFA Fourteen, and to swoop like it did and seek to arrest people concerned with FIFA at the highest levels—but people who were concerned with FIFA at the higher levels from the confederations, actually, it’s very important to remember that—and other people such as agents who were working at the heart of the new flows of money in the game. Really that’s really when the time bomb went off because what had happened is that the FBI had a new informer, the American Chuck Blazer, who had been general secretary of the Central America and Caribbean Confederation and had turned whistleblower because of his own tax misdemeanors. And so the FBI for some years had been gaining more and more information and Blazer really blew the whistle very loudly indeed. It was a very theatrical moment actually when the authorities raided the luxury hotel on the edge of Lake Zurich, and FIFA then rattled and Blatter won his election a day or two later, at the end of that week. But a couple of days later he announced at a special press conference that he was standing down. So it was a moment when really what some of us had been researching and writing about was suddenly shared by the world and it became possibly the biggest football-related story outside, say, a World Cup final, or some huge political event to do with a big game, that we’ve known. And it gave FIFA a chance to really think again and put its house in order, if you like.

“Whats happened in Switzerland in May 2015 gave FIFA a chance to really think again and put its house in order”

FIFA tried to ban one of your books [Football, Corruption and Lies: Revisiting “Badfellas”]. Has the situation changed with Infantino? Do you think he is a good president?

It’s a very good question because Infantino has a very experienced background in football administration as secretary general of the European body, UEFA. What he did was very, very clever, actually, at the Congress in February 2016 to find Blatter’s successor. He said to all of the associations there who had the vote, the 209 or so associations at the time I think, he said “I will work with you. All of FIFA’s money, whose is it?” He said: “It is yours. We will work together.” And people in the congress all stood up and applauded, and he made a plea—I think it was a genuine plea—to say “there are a lot of resources available through FIFA that we can redistribute.” The key question now is how you redistribute across the world in the realistic best interests of those who need economic help most. So what Infantino has got to do really is to show that FIFA can be rather more transparent in how that redistribution takes place.

Who has the real power to change things: clubs, federations, the media, fans?

In an ideal world, they would all work together. In an ideal world, there would be fora, there would be gatherings, there would be ways of these interests representing each other. The clubs have particular power, the richer the game has got the more money that has gone to the top clubs through things like Champions League rights and so on, which has led to players being extraordinarily valuable commodities in themselves. It means that the clubs in some ways have the biggest say but they do not have the widest power. So the associations and then the international confederation still have, and I think this is very appropriate, they still have the organizational power. So, in my view, and UEFA has done this a little bit, the clubs and the confederations, and the international federation FIFA, they must learn to work together more openly and, I’m sorry to use the word perhaps again, but more transparently. UEFA started doing this by giving the clubs more space, if you like, in the structures of UEFA, but it must not only be the richest four or five clubs from each of the richest countries in the football world that represent the clubs because then it would be much more a kind of continuing monopoly of the rich. And the people’s game must not be allowed to develop solely along that line.

“In women’s football, I’d love to see a bigger market, not just in special events of the women’s game, but a bigger market that combines live audiences, live crowds with the featured stuff on the media”