{"id":742146,"date":"2026-08-18T19:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/742146\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T19:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:12:09","slug":"infantino-ally-insists-fifa-president-still-has-backing-of-most-football-associations-fifa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/742146\/","title":{"rendered":"Infantino ally insists Fifa president still has backing of most football associations | Fifa"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of Gianni Infantino\u2019s closest allies has said he would \u201ctake a bullet\u201d for the Fifa president and is confident that he still has the overwhelming support of its all-powerful congress despite mounting pressure.<\/p>\n

But V\u00e9ron Mosengo-Omba, who served as Fifa\u2019s chief member associations officer until 2021 and is now president of the Congolese Football Federation (Fecofa), also criticised Infantino\u2019s Fifa<\/a> Forward Enterprise (FFE) scheme that wanted to sell off more than 20% of the World Cup to private investors.<\/p>\n

Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation have been increasing their efforts to oust Infantino since publishing an open letter<\/a> calling for \u201cleadership that serves football, not seeks to command it\u201d.<\/p>\n

That came after Fifa had accused Infantino\u2019s opponents of launching a \u201cconcerted and ongoing effort by some to undermine Fifa and its president\u201d. The Fifa chief operating officer, Kevin Lamour, was sacked on Monday<\/a> after criticising Infantino\u2019s ill-fated plan.<\/p>\n

As reported by the Guardian, Uefa<\/a> has been seeking support from other confederations to call an emergency Fifa congress to trigger a vote of no confidence in Infantino, although there are serious doubts whether they have enough support to reach the threshold of 106 of the 211 Fifa members required to unseat him.<\/p>\n

Mosengo-Omba \u2013 a close friend of Infantino\u2019s from their university days in Switzerland, who was elected unopposed as Fecofa president in May \u2013 has admitted that he was against the controversial plan but backed Infantino to stay on as president.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the federations are supporting him. Just ask the congress,\u201d he told the Guardian. \u201cI didn\u2019t send a letter of support [for Infantino] because I didn\u2019t agree with the way the project was done. Now people are trying to attack Gianni but I\u2019m ready to take a bullet for him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mosengo-Omba added: \u201cGianni came with a proposal. Uefa is selling the Champions League and the Euros \u2013 they are independent companies. He was doing the same. Gianni came with a similar proposal but now he has withdrawn it. So what\u2019s the problem? What I didn\u2019t like and where I think Gianni committed a mistake was the way it was done. Because the risk was it could have seen a lot of [private] companies organising the World Cup. That is my reproach to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In partnership with the US bank JP Morgan, Infantino had planned for FFE to raise hundreds of millions of dollars by selling 21% of the World Cup\u2019s commercial rights to investors, with promises of an increase in distribution of \u201cover $10bn\u201d (\u00a37.5bn) then being redistributed back to Fifa\u2019s 211 member associations.<\/p>\n

Mosengo-Omba, who stepped down as general secretary of the Confederation of African Football in March after reaching the age limit, said that while the initial plan had been soundly rejected he is weighing up whether to propose another scheme that would see each confederation being offered the chance to buy a stake in the World Cup in order to generate more revenue for its members.<\/p>\n

\u201cGianni\u2019s project was good. I would buy it but make some changes,\u201d he said. \u201cYou could, for example, say that a confederation can buy 20%. We could do that. That\u2019s my idea \u2013 I could come with the proposal in the next congress, maybe. Because I need money to develop football in the Congo. The people here have nothing. We would get $20m a year if this happened and that can have a big impact in my country.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of Gianni Infantino\u2019s closest allies has said he would \u201ctake a bullet\u201d for the Fifa president and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-742146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742146","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=742146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}