It was getting to a point where the old joke seemed appropriate.

“If only Sunil Gulati were alive …”

For years, the U.S. had seemed a fellow-traveler in the ranks of regional soccer — let alone having any weight in the global governance of the game.

Trinidad’s profoundly corrupt Jack Warner controlled Concacaf, the regional confederation for North and Central America and the Caribbean. Understandably, being obscured by Warner (in tandem with his American stooge-turned-FBI-informant, Chuck Blazer) left Gulati and U.S. soccer in eclipse.

That may have changed today.

It appears that Gulati and the U.S. delegation were pivotal in getting eventual winner Gianni Infantino from a narrow lead, in the first round of voting, to a 23-vote victory in the second round.

This is important for two reasons:

–It kept Sheikh Salman of Bahrain, who has been dogged by accusations of human rights violations but was the heavy favorite to win the election, from winning the Fifa presidency. The sheikh also comes from the Asian Football Confederation, which never has been known for probity.

–And it thrusts Gulati and U.S. soccer into Infantino’s mind as apparently vital for redirecting first-round votes for Prince Ali of Jordan to the Swiss candidate, who secured the presidency with 115 votes in the second round, to Sheikh Salman’s 88.

This could redound to the favor of U.S. Soccer in several ways.

Let’s back up and note some of the key passages from the New York Times story on Infantino’s election, outlining the apparently frantic politicking Gulati & Co. did between the first and second ballots at the Extraordinary Congress in Switzerland today.

Here is the first bit:

Gulati and the rest of the U.S. Soccer delegation had worked the floor of delegates between the first and second ballots, trying to swing votes to Infantino, who gained a startling 27 votes from one ballot to the next. Afterward, many officials pointed to U.S. Soccer’s role in the result — an important development because the full congress votes on World Cup hosts, and U.S. Soccer is likely to submit a bid during Infantino’s tenure to host the 2026 World Cup.

And a bit more:

U.S. soccer supported Prince Ali last May when he was defeated handily by [Sepp] Blatter and again on the first ballot. Gulati had told Infantino, however, that U.S. Soccer would support him if it became clear the election was a two-horse race. After a short meeting with Prince Ali between ballots, during which Prince Ali praised Infantino, Gulati and U.S. Soccer set to work.

As many as 10 federations from Concacaf … are believed to have followed U.S. Soccer and switched from Prince Ali to Infantino, as well as a handful in Asia and Europe.

Asked by The Times about the makeup of the Infantino voters among the 207 voting national associations, Gulati was quoted as saying: “I’m much more familiar with how it got to 115 than the first 88.”

Just before the results of the second round of voting (during which I took a five-mile hike; really) were announced, the NYT’s as-it-happened blog noted that “Gulati was just down on the floor talking to a nodding Infantino. Seems to be more than chit chat.”

Earlier in the day, as I sat through the first round of voting, and the results, I wondered: “Can Sunil play politics … at all?” I wondered if the U.S. commitment to vote for Prince Ali — who got only 27 votes in the first round, to Infantino’s 88 and Sheikh Salman’s 85 — would not only be quixotic but costly.

Turns out Sunil is a “player” after all. He correctly deduced that Prince Ali’s 27 votes would determine which of the two first-round leaders would be the next president.

Sunil active and paying attention and perhaps leveraging that second-round support, which has to be good for U.S. soccer, and maybe is a direct function of 1) his new seat on the Fifa executive committee as well as 2) the removal of Jack Warner and Chuck Blazer from the top of the Concacaf pyramid.

Infantino, another Swiss polyglot, may well turn out to be a younger version of the disgraced Sepp Blatter. But Infatino was in favor of a set of reforms overwhelmingly approved by the 200-plus national federations — including the reduced authority of an expanded executive committee (which also must have six women among the 36 members). And we can hope his notion of expanding the World Cup to 40 teams is something he gives up on.

The sources of Infantino’s support also augur well for a chance at organizational probity, going forward. He was general secretary at Europe’s federation, Uefa, which is, from what we can tell, the least corrupt of the continental federations.

Infantino presumably took almost all of Europe’s 53 votes and had been told by South America that the whole of its influential 10-member confederation would vote for him. He also got a commitment of seven votes from the Concacaf sub-group, the Central American Football Union, and there you have about 70 of the 88 votes Infantino got in the first round.

Then Sunil Gulati got him over the hump.

In winning, Infantino could have created a new winning coalition — Europe and South America, the two continents where the finest football is played — along with Concacaf, now free of the Warner-Blazer shackles and led by a Sunil Gulati who may be better at this federation president thing than we ever expected.

Blatter’s five electoral victories hinged on massive support from Asia and Africa and in spite of strong opposition from Europe, the home of the game.

Now we see if Infantino is competent and trustworthy.

Unlike a Sheikh Salman presidency, which would have been a disaster for global soccer, an Infantino regime has a chance to be fair and honorable. And the U.S. may have a place in it.