Does Gianni Infantino have any friends?

Had some time to digest that trade deadline? Yeesh. A lot comin at ya before 3pm on a Monday.

As per Baseball America, the two best prospects traded (Anthony Eyanson and Arjun Nimmala) were not a party of the Skubal deal. For all the yelling about teams needing to be more aggressive, there was equal yelling that the Red Sox overspent for Adley Rutschman.

Across baseball and basketball, I’ve been struggling recently with answering this question in regards to GMs: how do I know you’re good? If you’re Washington Wizards GM Will Dawkins, then I think you’re good because you came up with the Thunder, swung a few nice trades to maximize assets, and got lucky enough to draft AJ Dybantsa. But you’ve never made the playoffs, held onto Anthony Davis, and handed Trae Young $212m guaranteed. How do I know you’re good? If you’re Red Sox GM Craig Breslow, you fired Alex Cora and watched Boston become the hottest team in baseball, you swung a massive trade for a franchise catcher, and yet, you’re still in third place, two months ago everyone hated you, and despite being a Yale grad, you haven’t calculated how to win 90 games in your time in the Big Boy Seat. How do I know you’re good? If Adley Rutschman turns into Mike Piazza, then the answer would be much more obvious.

Today’s Hard in the Paint comes from a friend. Never hesitate to request a topic. If it’s both extremely topical and interesting to the masses (or rather the very small number of people reading this), then your idea can become Blog Excellence in the matter of days.

To paraphrase our friend: what’s goin on with this Infantino cat?

Great question. Fresh off one of the most commercially successful sporting events in history, Gianni Infantino is on the brink of losing his FIFA Presidency. Why? Gianni’s ill-fated attempt to sell a significant stake in the World Cup to private investors ignited such a firestorm of dissent that FIFA nations are now holding a “crisis” meeting to determine their next course of action.

The international coalition in opposition to Infantino’s plan was remarkable. If they’ve (FIFA) said it once, then they can, in a backwards way, say it again: Football unites the world. Here’s why everyone was irked:

Nearly every governing body across the world threatened to boycott the World Cup if the plan was executed. Most notably, UEFA very publicly made it clear that they (which is England, Spain, Norway, France, etc…) would have no part in future tournaments. Try selling media rights for the World Cup if France and Spain aren’t included.

Gianni radically miscalculated his position in the sport and failed on multiple fronts. FIFA works with and for all the nations and governing bodies across the globe. In order to push his plan through, Infantino needed to sell two things:

He needed to communicate to each nation’s soccer federation why it made sense to sell off a chunk of future revenues in this moment. I can only imagine, coming off the heels of a record revenue World Cup, that Infantino delivered the laziest form of “the iron’s never been hotter” argument. He might even be right, but that fails to answer why participating nations wouldn’t want to keep that rippin hot iron for themselves.

In the event that FIFA did process the $4b equity investment from Kushner and team, most of that money would wind up as one time disbursements to soccer federations. Each country (and there are lots) would be free to upgrade facilities, hire new coaches, or launder the funds through their preferred channels. Probably some combination of the three! While cash strapped nations might’ve jumped at the get-out-of-debt-now card, the wealthier (and more influential) countries don’t necessarily need to compromise future earnings. Infantino’s plan ran counterintuitive to his most powerful stakeholders’ best interests. It’s almost like he should’ve known this would fail.

KMARK, does this mean the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Not entirely. It means a few things:

Point is: make good choices and everyone stays rich. Point also is: miscalculate the power of stakeholders, brazenly try to sell the World’s game to American investors, and generally maintain a punchable demeanor, then don’t be surprised when you’re kicked to the curb.