payments made by UEFA<\/a> to a former employee with whom the newspaper said Infantino was having an intimate relationship during his time as the European governing body\u2019s \u200cgeneral secretary.<\/p>\nHe has denied those allegations, and FIFA has rejected them as unfounded.<\/p>\n
When contacted by the AFP news agency, UEFA acknowledged that \u201ca departure payment was made to the individual in question\u201d at that time, \u201ccoupled with the payment of fees for an MBA course at a local business school\u201d.<\/p>\n
FIFA said recent reporting has included \u201cunsubstantiated assertions and demonstrably false claims\u201d concerning FIFA and its president, adding that it would challenge inaccurate or misleading reports \u201cdirectly and vigorously\u201d.<\/p>\n
FIFA added it would not support, facilitate or tolerate any process concerning the election of its president \u2060that was inconsistent with its statutes, democratic procedures and governance framework.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FIFA president \u2060was democratically elected by FIFA\u2019s member associations and continues to serve with their mandate,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who do not have the support of FIFA\u2019s Member Associations should not seek to achieve through allegation, insinuation or misinformation what they cannot achieve through FIFA\u2019s established democratic processes,\u201d FIFA said.<\/p>\n
FIFA split over Infantino<\/p>\n
After the crisis meeting in Morocco on Wednesday, FIFA apologised to its 211 member associations for mistakes in the handling of the proposed World Cup spinoff and said its leadership had \u2060reaffirmed its full support for Infantino.<\/p>\n
The fallout has cast a shadow over Infantino\u2019s bid for a fourth term at the FIFA Congress in Morocco in March. \u2060No clear candidate to challenge him has yet emerged.<\/p>\n
UEFA has said it no longer has confidence in Infantino while Norwegian Football Federation President Lise Klaveness called on Friday for him to resign, saying he no longer had the institutional trust required to govern FIFA.<\/p>\n
But Infantino continues to enjoy substantial support among FIFA\u2019s 211 \u200cmembers. The Confederation of African Football (CAF) unanimously backed his leadership on Thursday while South America\u2019s CONMEBOL rejected any attempt to oust him that did not involve a vote of all FIFA members.<\/p>\n
Mexico\u2019s football federation (FMF) also backed \u200cInfantino \u200cdespite its regional confederation, CONCACAF, having called for a \u201ccomprehensive reckoning\u201d with his presidency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe FMF will neither recognise nor approve any process convened outside of that institutional framework,\u201d the Mexican federation said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Statement comes after Infantino denies claims that UEFA paid off his alleged lover while he was the body\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851865,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,3456,527,44,457,82,834],"class_list":["post-851864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-europe","tag-football","tag-news","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-switzerland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851864","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=851864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}