Tommy Martin: If only Philip Browne could have run FIFA...
IRFU Chief Executive Philip Browne following a meeting with Minister for Health Simon Harris at the Department of Health in Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
The sad passing of Philip Browne this week reminded us of the greatest talent that a sports administrator can have. The former IRFU chief executive, who served as Irish rugby’s head man for 23 years until his retirement in 2021, was, famously, famous for not being famous.
A blazered contemporary for much of John Delaney’s showbiz notoriety as FAI CEO, critics of Irish soccer’s controversial chief would often point to his rugby equivalent and ask, rhetorically, if anyone knew who the IRFU chief executive was. Exactly, they would add, when greeted with blank faces.
While Delaney partied with fans, guested on chat shows and, bizarrely, once threw his tie into the crowd to celebrate a win in Macedonia, Browne simply got on with the job of successfully dragging Irish rugby into the professional era.
He would shuffle in front of the cameras once a year to talk through the IRFU’s annual report, then swiftly return to his desk and allow the players and coaches to take the limelight. The comparative fortunes of the IRFU and FAI in the years since the two men departed their positions show which approach is more effective.
Oh, for such modest deportment at the head of global soccer these days. Thankfully, by the time you read this, the omnipresent figure of FIFA president Gianni Infantino will largely have receded into the background as the opening matches of the 2026 World Cup play out and the great tidal wave of football engulfs attention spans for the next five weeks.
Until such point as the football starts, a World Cup is nothing but sports administration. The organisation of games, venues, ticketing and logistics, the designing of logos and commissioning of Shakira – without the sport, sport is admin. And when the admin is Infantino, that means a World Cup as troubling and embarrassing as this one was until Mexico and South Africa mercifully got the ball rolling on Thursday night.
Now that the goals have started flying in, the World Cup becomes something other than the spectacle of shameless sycophancy towards Donald Trump, obscene ticket pricing and visa issues that, among other grim stories, have defined the tournament in the eyes of many until this point.
But that doesn’t mean we forget. We are now used to Infantino being front and centre in the years before a World Cup becomes a World Cup, looming like a giant smirking moon over the citizens of Planet Football. It is now traditional for this great, four-year tour de force of buffoonery to reach a climax at his pre-World Cup press conference, which has become a sort of State of the Nation for the daft republic of Gianni.
It was in this forum in 2022 that Infantino delivered his appalling “Today, I feel gay” speech in response to the human rights concerns about hosts Qatar. This week, before the action kicked off in Mexico City, Infantino told world football to “chill, relax” following the shocking news that one of FIFA’s leading referees, the Somalian Omar Artan, had been refused entry to the USA despite possessing what he claimed was the required visa documentation.
If the speech in Qatar was merely tone-deaf, this time Infantino’s words belied a greater truth about the FIFA’s president’s conduct: that after prostrating himself at Trump’s feet in the most humiliating manner for years now, he had not even secured the basic concession of FIFA being able to appoint who they wished to referee their matches.
Artan’s plight, and the many other visa issues reported for players, squad officials and fans trying to enter the USA, made a mockery of Infantino’s claim that this would be the most inclusive World Cup ever, a declaration no less undermined by the eye-watering ticket prices.
His response to questions about the visa issues this week was to shrug his shoulders at FIFA’s inability to influence the governance of host nations, a fact that makes his tireless efforts to curry favour with Trump seem all the more futile.
That this president, for whose benefit Infantino had dreamed up the toe-curling FIFA Peace Prize, could not even see his way to relaxing visa entry processes to help the World Cup go off smoothly, shows how foolish it was of Infantino to expect his obsequiousness to earn Trump’s respect.
At every step of his courtship of the Trump administration, Infantino had embarrassed the sport he represents, so he deserved every bit of the embarrassment his supposedly great friend handed him in return this week.
In many ways, Infantino is right. There is only so much that FIFA can do to influence the policies of the host nation once it has been awarded the tournament. The genial images of Vladimir Putin welcoming the world in 2018 had no impact when it came to launching his imperial assault on Ukraine. Bestowing the World Cup upon Qatar did not spare the lives of thousands of migrant workers who paid the ultimate price to benefit the autocratic state’s global image.
Similarly, dealing with Trump’s America is to fall inevitable victim to that regime’s key characteristic, which is utter, malign incompetence. This is an administration, in both of its goes at high office, that has botched almost all of its hare-brained schemes, from economic tariffs to Middle Eastern military adventures. Trump’s America, famously, couldn’t even build a wall.
So, it is no surprise that dancing with this particular devil has left FIFA unable to perform the sports admin duty that is a basic for even the humblest amateur league - appointing a ref for a match.
At the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, TV match directors were instructed to include at least one camera cutaway of Infantino sitting up in the gods in their coverage, so if the same rules apply you won’t be entirely denied Gianni-watch over the coming weeks. But the FIFA president’s cringe-making ego-trip will at least take a back seat with 104 football matches to be getting on with, until he returns to debase himself for another four-year pantomime as the face of the 2030 tournament.
And return he shall. Infantino has already declared his intention to run for another four-year term as FIFA president, and the political scheming that led to the World Cup’s expansion will ensure him a base of support to discourage any challengers who might feel football deserves better.
Irish eyes will recognise the modus operandi from Delaney’s time as supreme leader; if only the global game was governed using the Philip Browne approach.
