Neville: Infantino ‘worst face’ of Qatar World Cup

Gary Neville believes FIFA president Gianni Infantino is “the worst face” to represent the Qatar World Cup after his controversial monologue and wants the governing body to “clean up its act”.

Infantinodeliveredanextraordinary hour-long speech in a pre-tournament press conference in Doha in which he declared “today I feel gay” and “I feel (like) a migrant worker”, before taking aim at European critics of Qatar.

Ahead of yesterday’s opening gameofthe2022finalsbetween the host nation and Ecuador, former England defender Neville was appearing as a pundit on bein Sports and heavily criticised the Swiss, labelling him a “terrible face for football”.

He said: “I’ve been all around the world with Manchester

United and there’s no doubt we should be taking football all around the world, but he’s a terrible face for football, that guy (Infantino). Some of the things he said yesterday were inappropriate and shouldn’t be said by him. He should be statesmanlike, he should be bringing people together, he’s the global representative of football, not answering to one or two nations which he seemed to be doing yesterday. He’s got to rise above it.

“I’m sick of these leaders like (Boris) Johnson, (Donald) Trump, Infantino and (Sepp) Blatter – they don’t unite, they divide, all their language is about division, even though they think they’re bringing people together, they’re not.

"Some of his language yesterday about, ’I’m a migrant worker, I’m disabled’ is an absolute scandal, he shouldn’t be using that type of language. He shouldn’t be using those phrases in my opinion.”