{"id":731994,"date":"2026-08-09T00:20:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T00:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/731994\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T00:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T00:20:11","slug":"gianni-infantino-fifa-criticises-campaign-to-oust-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/731994\/","title":{"rendered":"Gianni Infantino: Fifa criticises campaign to oust president"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifa has strongly criticised what it calls a “concerted and ongoing effort” to “undermine” the organisation and its president Gianni Infantino. <\/p>\n

The statement follows a Daily Telegraph report, external<\/a> which claimed Infantino’s alleged lover was given a severance payment by Uefa<\/a> after he had an affair while he was its general secretary.<\/p>\n

A Fifa spokesperson told the Telegraph Infantino “strongly denies” the allegations and that they are “categorically untrue”.<\/p>\n

Fifa has now itself hit out at “unsubstantiated assertions and demonstrably false claims”, adding that “speculation and insinuation should not be presented as fact”.<\/p>\n

Infantino has come under increasing pressure from Uefa and European football associations over his aborted Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal. <\/p>\n

FFE would have meant a new company being created to manage commercial and ticketing rights, with 21% sold off to a private investment company.<\/p>\n

Uefa has said it has lost confidence in Infantino, while Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) president Lise Klaveness on Friday called on the Swiss-Italian to resign<\/a>.<\/p>\n

European football’s governing body says its threat to boycott Fifa events remains on the table<\/a>, adding that assurances the FFE plan could not be revived have not been received.<\/p>\n

“The Fifa president was democratically elected by Fifa’s Member Associations and continues to serve with their mandate,” Fifa said in its statement on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“It is increasingly evident that there is a concerted and ongoing effort by some to undermine Fifa and its president. <\/p>\n

“Those who do not have the support of Fifa’s member associations should not seek to achieve through allegation, insinuation or misinformation what they cannot achieve through Fifa’s established democratic processes.”<\/p>\n

Opposition to Infantino is largely from within Europe.<\/p>\n

The Mexican Football Federation broke ranks with its regional governing body Concacaf to come out in support of Infantino.<\/p>\n

It echoed a statement from Conmebol – South America’s governing body – in saying it would reject any attempt to remove Infantino without a vote involving all 211 Fifa member countries.<\/p>\n

Infantino is also unanimously backed by the 54 nations of the Confederation of African Football (Caf).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifa has strongly criticised what it calls a “concerted and ongoing effort” to “undermine” the organisation and its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":731995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-731994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/731995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}