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Gianni Infantino Elected Fifa President by Lordspicy(m): 7:23pm On Feb 26, 2016 |
Fifa has elected Gianni Infantino, a
European football administrator born
just six miles from Sepp Blatter’s
birthplace, as its new president in a bid
to restore the reputational damage
wrought by his disgraced predecessor.
The Swiss-Italian Uefa general secretary
only entered the race when Michel
Platini was suspended then banned for
six years for accepting a “disloyal
payment” from Blatter in 2011.
But Infantino, who spent €500,000 of
Uefa funds on touring the globe in the
runup to the election, triumphed over
the controversial Asian Football
Confederation president, Sheikh Salman
bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, in the second
round of voting by 115 votes to 88.
More on this topic
Everything you need to know about
Gianni Infantino, the new Fifa president
The Bahraini had assumed his
presidential bid would end in a
coronation when he resolved to stand
after Platini’s withdrawal in October
but his campaign has been marred by
strenuously denied allegations over
human rights breaches and vote buying
in previous elections.
After Infantino took a narrow 88-85
lead in the first round of voting, with
the Jordanian Prince Ali bin al-Hussein
in third place with 27 votes and the
French former Fifa executive Jérôme
Champagne in fourth with seven after
the withdrawal of Tokyo Sexwale, he
seized the initiative.
Infantino’s energetic campaign,
together with Blatter-style promises to
more than double the development
money dispensed to Fifa’s 207
federations to $5m over four years,
won the day.
“I want to be the president of all of you.
I travelled through the globe and I will
continue to do this. I want to work with
all of you to restore and rebuild a new
era where we can put football in the
centre of the stage,” Infantino told the
delegates after his victory.
“Fifa has gone through sad times,
moments of crisis. But those times are
over. We need to implement the
reforms, we need to have good
governance and transparency. But we
also need to have respect. We will
regain this respect by hard work and
dedication, so we can again concentrate
on the wonderful game of football.”
His pitch also included a boast that he
had vastly increased Uefa’s revenues,
promising to do the same for an
organisation now staring at a $550m
financial black hole. “It’s your money,
not the money of the Fifa president,” he
told the delegates to applause. “The
money of Fifa has to be used to develop
football.”
The 45-year-old, who has been at Uefa
for 15 years and general secretary for
the last seven, has promised to “bring
football back to Fifa” but is faced with a
huge task to restore its battered
reputation.
The crisis set in motion by the decision
to hand the 2018 and 2022 World Cups
to Russia and Qatar in 2010 accelerated
dramatically last May when US
prosecutors unsealed an indictment
alleging a “World Cup of fraud” and
arrested a string of senior executives on
money laundering and corruption
charges.
Infantino becomes just the third Fifa
president in 40 years personified by
Blatter and his Brazilian predecessor,
João Havelange, during which Fifa’s
revenues soared but scandals involving
World Cup tickets, TV rights and
corrupt bidding races multiplied.
The 45-year-old was a loyal ally of
Blatter, voting for him in the last
election in May, which gave the Swiss a
fifth term despite a spate of arrests of
Fifa executives amid $200m bribery
claims. But days later Blatter was forced
to promise to stand down and then was
banned from football for six years for
making a £1.3m “disloyal payment” to
his one-time heir apparent Platini in
2011.
Critics will point to Infantino’s previous
loyalty to Platini and Uefa’s failure to
embrace governance reforms itself, as
well as match-fixing controversies in
Greece and Turkey, as evidence that he
does not represent the wholesale change
required.
But the canny multilingual lawyer is
likely to prove a more palatable
frontman for Fifa’s desperate last-ditch
reform attempts, drawn up by a
combination of US lawyers and the
audit and compliance committee
chairman, Domenico Scala, than Sheikh
Salman would have.
More on this topic
Fifa election: Gianni Infantino wins
presidential election – as it happened
The Bahraini’s campaign was marred by
persistent allegations that he helped
identify athletes punished following
2011’s pro-democracy protests. He has
denied the claims, admitting he chaired
a committee convened for the purpose
but insisting it met only once and
conducted no formal business.
Following various dire warnings from
Fifa’s veteran acting president, Issa
Hayatou, himself once censured over his
role in the ISL bribery affair, about the
threat to the organisation if the “far-
reaching and progressive” reform
package did not pass, it was voted
through by 89% of Fifa’s 207 members.
The reforms include term limits,
transparency on pay, independent
committee members and the
replacement of the tarnished executive
committee with a new, enlarged Fifa
council that will set strategic direction
but will not be responsible for
commercial matters.
Huge legal costs, deserting sponsors,
media criticism and low staff morale
had led to Fifa being $550m behind its
projected $5bn revenue target for the
current four-year cycle, said the acting
director general, Markus Kattner. |
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