{"id":749470,"date":"2026-08-25T17:56:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/749470\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T17:56:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:56:28","slug":"gianni-infantino-irish-fa-withdraws-support-for-fifa-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/749470\/","title":{"rendered":"Gianni Infantino: Irish FA withdraws support for Fifa president"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Irish Football Association says it is &#8220;time for change&#8221; at Fifa and they will not be voting for president Gianni Infantino&#8217;s re-election next year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Infantino has been under increasing scrutiny since his aborted attempt to sell off a 21% stake in Fifa&#8217;s commercial operations to a private investment company.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The plans were scrapped after widespread criticism, with Uefa threatening a boycott of all Fifa competitions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The IFA, the governing body for football in Northern Ireland, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/articles\/c78gl599jn4o\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">had previously backed Uefa&#8217;s stance<\/a> without formally withdrawing their support, but have now said Infantino&#8217;s plan raised &#8220;fundamental questions&#8221; of the president.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It said in a statement: &#8220;The proposal to sell part of Fifa&#8217;s assets to a private equity firm without consultation, represents more than a failure of communication. In our view, it raises fundamental questions about strategy, governance and stewardship of our assets.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We believe the time has come for change.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Football Associations of England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/articles\/crrv4092pvlo\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">have previously publicly withdrawn support for Infantino<\/a>, who is scheduled to stand for a fourth term as president in March.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Should the 56-year-old Swiss be successful, by the end of the term in 2031, his tenure will have been extended to 15 years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish Football Association says it is &#8220;time for change&#8221; at Fifa and they will not be voting&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-749470","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\/749470","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=749470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}