Infantino’s World Cup sell-off debacle has rocked football but Fifa’s crisis has deep and rotten roots

It has been a remarkable few days for an institution that may be irredeemable but this is a story that stretches back to a decision in 2010

There are decades in which nothing happens, and weeks in which decades happen, and those weeks tend to result in leaders being toppled. Not even a fortnight ago, Gianni Infantino was taking his victory lap on Instagram, attacking “those behind their pens and papers, behind their screens spreading hate and false rumours” who had dared to question elements of his World Cup, which had generated a record $15bn in revenues. But the next day came the revelation of his plan to sell the World Cup to outside investors and a backlash that has him scrabbling to save his presidency.

It has been a remarkable few days, but this is a story whose roots stretch way back, to the decision in Zurich in 2010 to award the 2022 World Cup not to the US but to Qatar, to a furious Bill Clinton hurling an ashtray across the room and demanding action, to an FBI inquiry into corruption, and to the flipping of the larger-than-life Concacaf general secretary Chuck Blazer, who had two apartments in Trump Tower, one for himself and one for his cats.