‘Not the time to make deal for Fifa presidency’
LAUSANNE: Gianni Infantino, among the favourites to take the helm of FIFA, said in an interview published on Sunday there would be no deals among the candidates ahead of this week’s vote for a new president.
“This is not the time for deals,” the 45-year-old UEFA executive told the Le Matin Dimanche weekly.
He was responding to a question on whether he might consider a deal with his main opponent Bahrain’s Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa ahead of Friday’s vote.
“There is no question of that... I think a democratic election is fundamental for the credibility of FIFA as an institution,” Infantino said.
FIFA is in the throes of an unprecedented, wide-ranging scandal that has seen senior football executives suspended or fired, with disgraced longtime president Sepp Blatter and fallen head of European football, Michel Platini the most highprofile casualties.
FIFA, Infantino insisted, “must be headed by a president legitimised through an election.”
In addition to Salman, Infantino faces competition from South African businessman Tokyo Sexwale, Jordan’s Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, a former FIFA vice-president, and former FIFA official Jerome Champagne of France in the vote of FIFA’s 209 federations.
Infantino, a Swiss lawyer who only announced his candidacy after long-time favourite for the post Platini was caught up in the scandal and suspended from football for eight years, stressed that he was “not seeking power.”