Infantino caught in the web as tide turns against Trump in midterms and leaves Fifa exposed | Barney Ronay

Oh baby, clamp me in your repulsive mouthparts. Sink your unusually large and venomous fangs into my abdomen. And yes, we are doing this in the White House cabinet rooms, out there in plain sight of the watching world, just a gleaming golden ball between us. But it’s fine. Probably. Now take a sip of those sweet, sweet tiny male arachnoid entrails.

An exciting new study was published over the summer into the habits of the Australian redback spider. The research made headlines for its focus on reproductive behaviour, specifically the male’s urgent and very willing engagement in what is known as sexual cannibalism, AKA copulatory suicide.

Scientists observing these tiny arachnoids discovered that during the act of lovemaking with the larger, more decorative female, the male will perform a spectacular sexual death-somersault, flipping himself upside down, presenting his underbelly to the female’s fangs, and urging her to literally consume his intestines mid-coitus as an energy snack and self-dooming sweetener. You’ve already ripped my heart out, babe. Now take my guts as well.

This doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of the male redback’s sense of himself, his ability to recognise boundaries in a relationship. Overall, the picture is of a craven, fawning, hairless entity, entirely in thrall to its power-master. Yes, it might make sense for a while to place your prospects in the hands of a glassy-eyed red-tinged predator at the heart of a toxic web of power. But it can land you in a spot of bother down the line.

In unrelated news, there was a sense this week that Gianni Infantino’s entanglements with Donald Trump may have now moved one step closer to scrutiny, sunlight, consequences, perhaps even some kind of decisive intestinal devouring. The sight of Infantino cavorting for the US president was one of the more grotesque sport-adjacent spectacles of recent times. What kind of relationship was this?

How will history remember that display of power-fluffing, the supposedly apolitical Fifa president sat nodding gravely at the walnut-veneered table as the latest immigration policy is trailed, beaming along as some random crypto-waffle is chucked into the mix, and becoming through this an ever more contorted figure, as though essence of human mendacity has been condensed, reconstituted into a fine paste, pumped into a serge blue suit and taught to walk around saying the phrase: “My magic ball unites the golden peace world.”

At the time it felt as though this was some kind of warning siren, a real-time satire on the idea of unaccountable executive power. Is this just allowed now, confirmation in human form that acting as though you exist outside the rules is halfway to actually being there?

Well, maybe not. As of Wednesday there is for the first time a sense of something potentially self-dooming about that public two-hander. Perhaps this is the best way to picture those interactions now, Infantino backflipped in supplication, thighs clamped around the presidential shoulders, presenting his tenderest parts to those razor-sharp mandibles. Feast on my entrails. Consume my borrowed sporting soul. Empower me. Or don’t. Whatever. We’ll talk later.

Trump may be heading into a diminished final two years in office. But Trump Exposed Reactor Core Syndrome is still very much in play, a principle that states, yes, he will give you heat, light and a deathly glow. But he will also melt your face in the process. And maybe this process is now finally coming for the world’s second-most-provocative elected president.

The headline Fifa news this week was the council member Kozo Tashima’s announcement that he will stand as a candidate in March’s leadership vote. There is, at the very least, someone else to vote for now. In the wider world, but potentially more significant to the Infantino regime, the US midterm elections brought a Democratic landslide in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Football is, as ever, just a tiny notch on the to-do list. To date those results are simply a rejection of something, the chance to luxuriate in the defenestrating of some of those High Trump oddities, the senator who believes a cabal of Sikhs is trying to steal the moon, the House representative on record as saying all Eritreans are genetically derived from yoghurt, the one-term governor who looks as if he bites the heads off sparrows and wears a suit made entirely from recycled human fingernails.

What comes next is not clear. But there is talk of cleaning house. Internal judicial matters are now firmly in the hands of Trump’s opponents. Some Democrats have warned of the need to “lawyer up”, have spoken about correcting the most excessive acts of opportunism over the past two years.

Even as Infantino is out there bartering for his future, bothered at mosquito-level by a cloud of revelations – the use of Fifa resources to electioneer, talk of having his maid’s visa raised at government level – the one thing that may actually get close to him is force majeure.

At which point enter the tantalising figure of Jamie Raskin, representative for Maryland’s 8th district, and widely tipped to become the new chair of the House judiciary committee. Raskin is a hawk on what he describes as “the corruption” of aspects of the Trump regime. And these include Fifa.

Raskin’s letter to Infantino dated 26 July bears re-reading. First he brings up the wire fraud and money laundering case against Full Play Group that was part of the 2015 indictments against the Blatter regime and that was dropped by the Trump administration because it was “not a priority”.

He refers to “Fifa’s brazen campaign to curry favour with Donald Trump since his re-election”, the “hilariously fake ‘Fifa Peace Prize’”, the leasing of office space in Trump Tower at an economically irrational rate, describing this and other elements as a “strategy of outright bribery”.

Examples of price gouging and “fraudulent sales tactics” are mentioned as a lever for a potentially fascinating disclosure of Fifa communications with the Trump organisation, and the promise of a full congressional investigation.

This was sabre-rattling at the time. It isn’t any more. The letter was also sent before the Joshua Kushner-linked scheme to sell off part of the World Cup to private equity, described by Raskin as a “smash-and-grab scam of colossal proportions”. “Now we see where all the bribes, kickbacks and sweetheart deals have been leading,” he told the Guardian. Are you excited yet? Does this sound like possible fangs of doom stuff?

This is the same Democrat who could now have the authority to compel testimony and documents from Fifa, JP Morgan – the bank involved in the sell-off process – and entities associated with the Kushner family. The Trump White House has in the past dismissed such allegations as politically motivated. Fifa has kept its head down. Well, good luck with that now.

Who knows? Even the noise, the heat and the potential ripples may be enough for some of those being asked to vote in Rabat next year. Infantino’s self-promotion as a one-man global brand, the royal court persona, the selfie with Pelé’s coffin, the micromanaging of the vote for Saudi 2034. All this creates its own internal tensions.

There would of course be satisfaction at witnessing a redback-style ending. Even if, as ever, the worst part is the feeling of sadness, of chances missed, the thought of what could have been done with all this power in larger, less grasping, less mandible-like hands.

The wheels of justice can be disappointingly clogged and reluctant to grind. But this feels motivated and public enough to carry some energy. There is at least a ball rolling now. Plus the central irony, that Infantino made himself a player here, dared the world to watch, and willingly hurled himself into that cannibalistic embrace.