- Uefa general secretary takes over from Sepp Blatter at governing body
- Infantino fought off competition from Sheikh Salman and three others
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.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. – Agencies
