Hindustan Times (Delhi)

NO CHALLENGE: INFANTINO TO GET 4 MORE YEARS AS FIFA PRESIDENT

- Agencies sportsdesk@hindustant­imes.com

ZURICH: FIFA president Gianni Infantino is getting four more years in charge of football’s governing body after no candidate stepped up to challenge him.

FIFA said on Thursday the 52-year-old Swiss lawyer was the only person to enter the race by the time the deadline passed overnight — exactly four months before election day on March 16 in Kigali, Rwanda.

Infantino won a five-candidate race in 2016 to replace Sepp Blatter, and was re-elected unopposed in 2019. He’s now set to stay in the job beyond the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

Infantino’s upcoming re-election to the $3 million-per-year job may not be his final term in office. FIFA rules allow him to run again to stay in power for another World Cup cycle until 2031. A quirk of FIFA’S statutes means the first three years of Infantino’s presidency — when he completed an unfinished term started by Blatter — does not count against the 12-year limit agreed to in reforms passed during a prolonged corruption crisis before his first election.

Outside of football, one political threat to Infantino’s leadership is an investigat­ion by two special prosecutor­s in Switzerlan­d into his three undocument­ed meetings with then-attorney general Michael Lauber in 2016 and 2017 during American and Swiss federal investigat­ions of soccer officials.

It is currently unclear how that case, which is being overseen by the Swiss parliament, is proceeding or how much jurisdicti­on it has over Infantino.

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