{"id":929355,"date":"2026-10-15T18:36:40","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/929355\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T18:36:40","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T18:36:40","slug":"apologetic-infantino-not-fit-to-lead-fifa-claim-european-fa-heads-after-meeting-fifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/929355\/","title":{"rendered":"Apologetic Infantino \u2018not fit\u2019 to lead Fifa, claim European FA heads after meeting | Fifa"},"content":{"rendered":"

European football leaders are increasingly confident they will find a candidate to stand against Gianni Infantino<\/a> in next year\u2019s Fifa presidential election, with the heads of the English and German football associations questioning his fitness to govern after a three-and-a-half-hour council meeting.<\/p>\n

Infantino began the long-awaited gathering of Fifa\u2019s 37-strong executive board by apologising for failing to consult them over his abandoned World Cup sell-off plan<\/a> but failed to provide answers to dozens of questions posed by the European FAs on a range of subjects including the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal, Donald Trump\u2019s Fifa peace prize<\/a> and the Folarin Balogun affair<\/a>, when the USA striker\u2019s World Cup suspension was overturned after lobbying from the US president.<\/p>\n

Infantino\u2019s apology was followed by a 30-minute presentation on FFE from two American lawyers, who described the $20bn (\u00a315.1bn) valuation and proposed sale of a 20% stake to Thrive Capital as a good deal for Fifa<\/a>. At the insistence of some attenders, the lawyers were asked to leave the meeting after they had presented. When questioned, one of them confirmed he had been commissioned and paid by Fifa to produce a review of FFE.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe main objective for Gianni was to survive this meeting and nothing more,\u201d one council member told the Guardian.<\/p>\n

Council members succeeded in deferring, until they receive more information on Balogun, a Fifa proposal to amend its disciplinary regulations by removing the scope for players shown a straight red card to have it rescinded. Infantino pledged to provide that information by their next meeting in Doha on 16 December, after nominations close on 18 November for March\u2019s presidential election.<\/p>\n

The issue of whether the Fifa peace prize will be revived this year or Trump left as a standalone winner has been referred to Fifa\u2019s social responsibility committee, and the Asian Football Confederation president, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, has been appointed to chair a new committee examining governance reform. But otherwise the meeting broke up without tangible answers, to the frustration of the English FA\u2019s chair, Debbie Hewitt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t get answers to anything that we had specifically requested,\u201d Hewitt said. \u201cI think the man [Infantino] has to answer those questions, and if he doesn\u2019t answer those questions, he\u2019s not fit to be Fifa president. That was what was shared in the meeting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The German FA\u2019s president, Bernd Neuendorf, went further by calling for wholesale reforms of Fifa\u2019s administration, which he hopes will fall within the purview of Sheikh Salman\u2019s governance committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole administration has to be reformed and the whole governance has to be reformed,\u201d Neuendorf said. \u201cBut I\u2019m pretty clear here that this is not possible with Gianni as the responsible person at Fifa. So we need a complete restart, I think, a political restart of persons who represent Fifa.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes he apologised, but I didn\u2019t have the feeling that this apology was because of the FFE project in total. My impression was it was just because it wasn\u2019t brought forward to the council and no one was involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Neuendorf also said he was \u201cvery confident\u201d that an alternative candidate would be found to stand against Infantino, a view shared by senior figures at Uefa<\/a>, who expect a late declaration to limit the amount of time for Fifa to scupper the nomination.<\/p>\n

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The respective presidents of the three continental confederations who have called for Infantino to go \u2013 Aleksander Ceferin of Uefa, Victor Montagliani of Concacaf and Sheikh Salman \u2013 have ruled themselves out and suggestions that high-profile figures such as Ars\u00e8ne Wenger or Michele Kang could put themselves forward have been dismissed.<\/p>\n

A proposal to distribute $3.5bn (\u00a32.6bn) from Fifa\u2019s financial reserves, which would involve each national association receiving $25m over the next four-year cycle, was approved by council.<\/p>\n

Montagliani is also understood to have been critical of Infantino, but Fifa\u2019s president received strong support from council members from Asia and Africa.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am certain that Gianni Infantino is the right president,\u201d Ahmed Yahya, president of the Mauritania Football Federation said. \u201cThe majority want Gianni Infantino to stay. After finally withdrawing this proposal, president Gianni Infantino apologised to the members of the executive committee. This was followed by a responsible debate, during which this issue was more or less shelved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the interests of football, the executive committee is looking ahead and seeking solutions, by focusing on the good aspects that football has to offer and trying to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"European football leaders are increasingly confident they will find a candidate to stand against Gianni Infantino in next…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-929355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929355","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=929355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}