{"id":848151,"date":"2026-08-08T16:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/848151\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:16:15","slug":"fifa-president-gianni-infantino-denies-claims-uefa-paid-off-alleged-lover-football-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/848151\/","title":{"rendered":"FIFA President Gianni Infantino denies claims UEFA paid off alleged lover | Football News"},"content":{"rendered":"

However, UEFA says a \u2018departure payment\u2019 was made to a female employee when Infantino was the body\u2019s general-secretary.<\/p>\n

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Published On 8 Aug 20268 Aug 2026<\/p>\n

Gianni Infantino has \u201cstrongly\u201d denied claims that a severance payment was made by UEFA to a female employee who was allegedly in a relationship with him during his previous role as the organisation\u2019s general-secretary.<\/p>\n

\u201cFIFA President Gianni Infantino strongly denies these allegations, and they are categorically untrue. Any insinuation of inappropriate conduct or violation of statutes or regulations is defamatory,\u201d a spokesman for the now FIFA president told the Daily Telegraph, who first reported the claims.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

\u201cNo employee at UEFA and FIFA has ever raised a complaint regarding Mr Infantino\u2019s behaviour because there never was an incident where he was involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, UEFA has issued a statement saying that \u201ca departure payment was made to the individual in question\u201d, in addition to fees for an MBA course, which it said was \u201cin line\u201d with regulations.<\/p>\n

The Daily Telegraph reported on Friday that UEFA had paid a six-figure sum to the woman, who allegedly had an affair with the married Infantino during his tenure as general-secretary at European football\u2019s governing body.<\/p>\n

FIFA did not immediately reply to Al Jazeera\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

The allegations come as the 56-year-old Italian-Swiss lawyer faces a career-threatening backlash<\/a> over his aborted plans to sell off stakes in FIFA competitions to private investors.<\/p>\n

UEFA, where Infantino served as general-secretary from 2009 to 2016, is now in open conflict with FIFA and, on Thursday, doubled down on last Saturday\u2019s statement saying it no longer has \u201cconfidence\u201d in Infantino.<\/p>\n

UEFA repeated its threat of boycotting the World Cups and one of its member associations, the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) called for Infantino to go immediately<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The NFF] are going to ask the FIFA president to resign now,\u201d said its straight-talking president, Lise Klaveness, on Friday.<\/p>\n

However, the football associations of Mexico and Argentina were the latest to throw their weight behind the embattled world football chief, following the Confederation of African Football\u2019s unanimous backing<\/a> of Infantino\u2019s leadership on Thursday.<\/p>\n

South America\u2019s CONMEBOL, meanwhile, expressed concerns over the \u201crepeated unilateral actions taken without resorting to dialogue\u201d.<\/p>\n

Infantino will almost certainly try to carry on his campaign to be elected for a fourth and final term in Rabat next March.<\/p>\n

Infantino, who had spent the past turbulent week among friends in Morocco, who are cohosting the 2030 World Cup, is, for the moment, the only candidate.<\/p>\n

The deadline for nominations is November 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, UEFA says a \u2018departure payment\u2019 was made to a female employee when Infantino was the body\u2019s general-secretary.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,2057,596,44,588,85,6221],"class_list":["post-848151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-europe","tag-football","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-switzerland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}