GENEVA (AP) \u2014 FIFA\u2019s removal of the senior official who said Gianni Infantino deceived staff with his World Cup sell-off plan was unacceptable, Norway soccer president Lise Klaveness said on Tuesday while urging other leaders at the governing body to resist potentially damaging orders.<\/p>\n
The firing of FIFA chief operating officer Kevin Lamour late Monday came 17 days after his statement to the Associated Press criticizing Infantino\u2019s $20 billion private equity project that helped to end it hours later.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow he is thrown out and we are supposed to move on. It\u2019s unacceptable, it\u2019s management by fear,\u201d Klaveness told the AP in a telephone interview, describing Lamour as \u201cthe best football administrator I have ever met.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow we also have to call upon FIFA leadership and the administration to not submit to orders you know are not in the interests of football,\u201d Klaveness added, especially targeting FIFA secretary general Mattias Grafstr\u00f6m.<\/p>\n
She is a former Norway international player, a judge in Oslo and an elected executive committee member at European soccer body UEFA who has built on her country\u2019s long-held reputation as a champion of good governance in soccer. <\/p>\n
Lamour was a long-time colleague of Infantino, first as senior officials at UEFA from 2007-15, on his campaign team to be elected FIFA president in 2016, then moving two years ago from UEFA to oversee much of FIFA\u2019s operations in Zurich.<\/p>\n
Infantino in crisis<\/p>\n
With a reputation among the most trusted executives in the often murky world of global soccer politics, Lamour\u2019s pointed criticisms of Infantino\u2019s leadership intensified a crisis for the FIFA president.<\/p>\n
A backlash by UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and north American soccer body CONCACAF was provoked by a secretive plan to sell future World Cup profits to investors led by Joshua Kushner.<\/p>\n
A $4.2 billion investment to take a 20% stake in a FIFA commercial spin-off was to fund offers of $20 million to each of its 211 national member federations. They already effectively own the non-profit soccer body, which has multibillion dollar reserves, and would have had a mid-September deadline to accept.<\/p>\n
Lamour\u2019s statement on July 31 spoke of FIFA staff being \u201cdeceived\u201d by Infantino\u2019s lack of openness over the now-failed sale and how they \u201cdeserve better than contempt and intimidation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The French executive called on soccer leaders worldwide \u201cto make the right decisions\u201d and signed off: \u201cIf that means I lose my job, then so be it. I will understand and respect that decision. At least I\u2019ll sleep well tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fired, not resigned<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a firing situation, it\u2019s not a resignation,\u201d Klaveness said of Lamour\u2019s exit, suggesting it was done by Grafstr\u00f6m \u201cobviously being pressured by the president.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement, FIFA said it \u201cthanks Kevin for his two years of service and wishes him the best of luck for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHis statement was necessary to kill the project,\u201d Klaveness said of Lamour\u2019s intervention. \u201cHe said something that was obvious, that was very important that someone within the staff told us the story so that we knew it was not FIFA, as such, but one person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Infantino called a meeting with senior management minus Lamour in Rabat, Morocco. After that Aug. 5 meeting, a FIFA statement apologized for errors and said those managers who attended \u201creaffirmed their full support\u201d of Infantino\u2019s presidency. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe all got reports in Morocco, we know it\u2019s a management of fear,\u201d Klaveness said. \u201cIt\u2019s not in football\u2019s best interests.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until the uproar over Infantino\u2019s \u201cFIFA Forward Enterprise\u201d proposal, he seemed sure to be reelected unopposed next year in Morocco. The deadline is Nov. 18 for challengers to enter the contest.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full soccer coverage here <\/p>\n
Graham Dunbar, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"GENEVA (AP) \u2014 FIFA\u2019s removal of the senior official who said Gianni Infantino deceived staff with his World…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":862489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-862488","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\/862488","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=862488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}