September 24 – After weeks of hiding and refusal to face his member associations or governing council members, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has found his jet legs again. This weekend he is visiting Caribbean islands on the campaign trial as he desperately tries to muster support for a continuation of his presidency.
Infantino is expected to visit Antigua and St Kitts, as well as Jamaica. In the past a block vote from the Caribbean has been a powerful force in FIFA elections, with the Caribbean often being the kingmakers, and sometimes getting rewarded for it.
For his part Infantino is already targeting the Caribbean federations which he sees as a weak link in the worldwide outcry over his leadership of FIFA. The Caribbean boys (there is one girl) are seen as ripe for manoeuvring. He has already brought in Gelson Fernandes to help twist arms. Fernandes is an unquestioning loyalist who played his national football for Switzerland, and who has been appointed as the director of member associations for the Caribbean, in addition to his similar role in Africa.
Infantino and Fernandes will be using every tool in their money belt to leverage support. And if that doesn’t work the similarly dark art around the manipulation of FIFA’s ethics body will come into play – as a former head of FIFA Ethics investigative arm told Insideworldfootball, “there isn’t a single FA president who doesn’t have an ethics complaint lodged against them”.
The Caribbean presidents are well used to this heavy-handed approach and for the most part seem to think it is all part of the game – never mind that the reality is they are being leveraged (bribed) by what is already their own money.
Antigua, St Kitts and Nevis, and Jamaica are seen as soft targets.
Antigua has a new president in Ickford ‘Nyah’ Roberts who was only elected in May 2026 but didn’t waste any time putting his support behind Infantino, including praising him for his “visionary stewardship (that) has indelibly reshaped the global football landscape”. Certainly he got the indelible part right, though most would argue that selling off all FIFA’s commercial rights wasn’t a visionary proposition but a potentially life ending one.
Being generous you could argue that Roberts has barely been around long enough to understand the nuances of world football politics or what is at stake here. Even so he wasted no time in putting his hand out for the promise of FIFA cash from Infantino. Some Caribbean football traditions live on – remember the Mohammed Bin Haman cash for votes scandal?
St Kitts and Nevis welcomed the withdrawal of the FIFA sell off plan, but in the next breath remarkably pledged full support for Infantino. In any other walk of life, indiscretions like Infantino’s that threaten the whole being of the institution or business would not go unpunished. That federation presidents actually believe that this is a non-issue is mindboggling.
Jamaica is a much bigger and potentially more powerful FA, and should be a leader within the region. But the dark side of football politics is something that Jamaica’s president Michael Ricketts is very comfortable with and a language he his fluent in. In that respect the Caribbean Football Union committee member looks like a perfect partner for Infantino.
Ricketts commented that the $20 million Infantino was offering for signing up to the FIFA Forward Enterprise sell off sounded good to him, saying that they could do a lot with that money in Jamaica. Putting aside the debate over the ethical and business rationale of selling off FIFA’s commercial lifeblood, there is still a trust issue with Jamaica actually receiving the money from FIFA, and what Ricketts would do with it once he got it.
Ricketts has a patchy ethical record that makes him low hanging fruit for Infantino and his storm troopers.
Ricketts’ first term as Jamaica president was marked by a court ruling handed down by Jamaica’s Supreme Court in 2017 against Ricketts, for derogatory language he used publicly against Ainsley Lowe in an election run-off, suggesting he was a homosexual. Jamaica criminalises same-sex sexual activity between men with sentences including a maximum penalty of ten years’ imprisonment with hard labour.
Lowe, who feared for his safety following Rickett’s comments, sued for defamation and won. Ricketts didn’t care as he had the presidency he sought. His conviction was brought to the attention of FIFA’s ethics investigators but no action was taken or explanation given as to why it was ruled that his homophobic language did not merit a sanction.
During his presidency Ricketts became synonymous with the spectacular fallout with Jamaica’s over-achieving women’s team who qualified for back-to-back World Cups – the only Caribbean nation men’s or women’s team to do so, and to qualify for the last 16 at a finals tournament.
That team ultimately refused en masse to play for their country when Ricketts held back their 2023 FIFA World Cup payments. The players said it was typical of his administration’s general disrespect of the women’s team and Rickett’s failure to adequately fund a women’s national team programme, forcing them to self-fund their achievements with the significant donations of Cedilla Marley.
Rickett’s Jamaican federation within their FIFA grant had an allocation specifically for the women’s game.
There has been an underlying narrative within some of the Caribbean FAs that they see themselves as more aligned to Africa than they do within their own geographical region. Their belief is that somehow Africa – which is the poorest, most down at heel and most subservient of all the confederations to FIFA’s white, European leader – will somehow come to support them with riches beyond their wildest dreams.
The reality is that Africa doesn’t have the money. The Caribbean heritage may be rooted in Africa, but the bigger financial opportunity is certainly not. And nor is the wider opportunity for their countries and their football eco-systems, tiny though some of them are.
Deja vous all over again?
The Caribbean and its football executives were a major target of the US justice department’s 2015 indictments in the FIFAgate case. Having lived through that crisis the Caribbean nations are potentially putting themselves in the middle of another, and one that is institutionally far more threatening to world football than FIFAgate was.
In 2015 FIFA and its members found unity in the face of adversity – and Concacaf emerged as a completely different entity built on serving the game and its members rather than the individuals that ran it.
In 2026 the stakes are higher for the Caribbean nations as this time it is about the future of the whole international game and their position in it – go the wrong way and they could find themselves isolated and impoverished as Europe in particular turns their back on their countries and players. For those whose national and football economies are still tied closely to funding from their former European masters, the impact could be nuclear.
The leaders of UEFA, the AFC and Concacaf have already pointed out that every member association of FIFA could easily be paid $10 million from existing reserves, and have asked Infantino to support the proposal.
Infantino has remained silent on this proposal, as has Africa’s leaders and South America’s.
So what is really going on here?
FIFA has come out of the highest revenue generating men’s World Cup of all time with $16 billion. That money is in no small part due to the remarkably accommodating nature of Concacaf that persuaded FIFA to grant the event to the region’s three biggest economies, and having invited them to the table, allowed FIFA to eat their lunch.
If Caribbean nations are incapable of making an informed decision predicated on what is good for the long term future of the game and the generations that will follow them in their own countries, then they should consider which side their bread is really buttered on. What is good for them right now?
Sadly, with too many of the Caribbean presidents when you boil it down it is only about the money, and what it means for them?
Is a guaranteed $10 million in the hand, distributed from money that is recognised as being theirs by right as owners of FIFA, better than vague and half-baked promises delivered in a jet by high-flying execs who are spending their grant money to do so.
Which side of history do the Caribbean nations want to be seen to be on. It is a pretty big decision for everyone.
Contact the writer of this story at paul.nicholson@insideworldfootball.com
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