When Gianni Infantino was elected as president of Fifa after years of bribery and corruption scandals shaming the organisation, his victory speech was full of promises. Football’s global governing body would be rebuilt with “good governance and transparency”, the Swiss administrator pledged. “Everyone in the world will applaud us.”

That was in 2016. A decade into Infantino’s reign, however, damaging allegations continue to hit the association – from allegations of secret payments to claims of ticketing extortion – even while the World Cup is under way.

Nobody feels more outraged and let down than Australian whistleblower, Bonita Mersiades.

She suffered greatly after raising concerns about malfeasance in Fifa’s World Cup bidding process. First she was sacked from her senior role at Football Australia in 2010, then she was hit by threats, cyber attacks and personal abuse in 2014 when it was revealed she’d assisted an official investigation.

Mersiades is troubled that risks she took to expose wrongdoing didn’t lead to genuine reform.

“The pattern of behaviour hasn’t changed,” she tells The i Paper from her home in Sydney, where she now runs a publisher of sport books. “If you don’t change the culture, nothing’s going to change… It’s very disappointing.”

Mersiades is backing the Reboot Fifa campaign run by a sports ethics group, Fair Square, which is lodging a formal complaint against Infantino for “repeated and serious breaches” of his organisation’s own rules.

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