{"id":844062,"date":"2026-08-03T08:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T08:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/844062\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T08:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T08:59:09","slug":"wales-become-first-nation-to-drop-support-for-fifa-president-gianni-infantino-gianni-infantino","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/844062\/","title":{"rendered":"Wales become first nation to drop support for Fifa president Gianni Infantino | Gianni Infantino"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The Football Association of Wales has withdrawn its support for the Fifa president Gianni Infantino\u2019s re-election bid over his bungled effort to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Infantino announced last week <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/aug\/01\/fifa-scraps-plan-to-sell-off-stakes-in-world-cup-after-widespread-backlash\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">he was shelving the widely denounced plan<\/a> that was rejected by three confederations but his decade-long reign at the head of Fifa remains under intense scrutiny.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">The UK prime minister, Andy Burnham, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/2026\/jul\/31\/andy-burnham-calls-on-infantino-to-resign-over-outrageous-world-cup-plans\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">said on Friday<\/a> that Infantino is the \u201cwrong man\u201d to lead Fifa, while England\u2019s Football Association called for a \u201cfull and robust review\u201d into his leadership.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">Infantino is due to stand for re-election in March next year but the FAW has now become the first football association to officially pull the plug on its support for the Swiss.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">A FAW statement read: \u201cThe Football Association of Wales hereby confirms its withdrawal of support for the candidature of Mr Gianni Infantino, for re-election as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/football\/fifa\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fifa<\/a> president for the 2027\u20132031 term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cThe recent failures in good governance, processes, leadership, values, stakeholder management, communications and sound judgement have led us to a position where Mr Infantino has lost the confidence of the FAW to remain at the helm of world football.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1s160rg\">\u201cFailing to put the best interests of football first is a failure we cannot accept.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Football Association of Wales has withdrawn its support for the Fifa president Gianni Infantino\u2019s re-election bid over&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-844062","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\/844062","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=844062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}