ZURICH, Aug 2 (Reuters) \u2013 Gianni Infantino\u2019s position as FIFA president looks untenable following his failed plan to sell a stake in the World Cup\u2019s \u200bcommercial rights, the head of Europe\u2019s professional \u200cfootball leagues said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Claudius Schaefer, whose organisation represents 53 professional men\u2019s and women\u2019s football leagues, said there could be \u201conly one consequence\u201d for Infantino after his plan triggered a storm of protest \u200cfrom \u200bregional associations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I saw how \u2060this whole thing unfolded \u2060and that FIFA\u2019s key bodies weren\u2019t involved, then there\u2019s essentially only one consequence in any company or association,\u201d Schaefer told Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung.<\/p>\n
Asked if this meant \u200bthat Infantino was now unacceptable as FIFA president, Schaefer said: \u201cThis is usually the consequence when someone in \u2060a company pushes such a \u2060business deal forward without anyone knowing about \u200bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Infantino said on Friday that FIFA had scrapped the plan \u200bafter a widespread backlash.<\/p>\n
Regional confederations UEFA and CONCACAF \u200csaid on Saturday they had lost confidence in his leadership.<\/p>\n
Schaefer, also chief executive of the Swiss Football League, said the proposal suggested that FIFA\u2019s main goal was \u2060to maximise profits for third parties by having more and bigger competitions in future.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s solely about the financial advantages; everything \u2060else is \u200ccompletely ignored,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The European Leagues opposed \u2060this because it would add more \u200bmatches to \u200can already packed international calendar to \u200bthe detriment \u2060of national championships, Schaefer said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody knew about the plans, not even the FIFA Council, the governing body of FIFA. I was very surprised that the president was acting completely alone in this matter.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by John Revill; Editing \u200bby Kevin Liffey)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH, Aug 2 (Reuters) \u2013 Gianni Infantino\u2019s position as FIFA president looks untenable following his failed plan to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-842152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}