An extraordinary congress of world soccer’s governing body has elected Infantino as its new President. Infantino has pledged to implement a package of reforms meant to lead FIFA out of the worst crisis in its history.
Delegates from 207 national football associations voted on Friday to elect UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino as the man to take FIFA forward.
The 45-year-old Swiss-Italian won the election with a simple majority of 115 votes in the second round, at the end of a long day at Zurich’s Hallenstadion. Neither he nor the perceived front-runner, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain was able to muster the two-thirds majority needed to win in the first round, having taken 88 and 85 votes, respectively.
Infantino’s lobbying after the first round obviously worked, as he picked up a total of 27 votes to put him over the top. Sheikh Salman only picked up three votes in the second round of voting. It’s not clear whether delegates had second thoughts about supporting Salman due to allegations of human rights abuses in connection with a violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Bahrain in 2011. He has denied the allegations.
Champions League showman
Known best until recently as the man who runs the Champions League draws, Infantino replaces Issa Hayatou of Cameroon, who stepped in as interim president after longtime FIFA boss Sepp Blatter was banned as part of a corruption scandal last autumn.
“We will restore the image of FIFA … We have to be proud of FIFA. We have to be proud altogether,” Infantino told the delegates just minutes after his victory was announced. “I want to be the president of all of you … It is time to return to football. FIFA has gone through hard times, crisis times. These times are over … We have to win back the respect, and focus on this wonderful game that is football.”
Hours-long process
Although the voting only went two rounds, with only two ballot boxes being used, the whole process took several hours to complete. The first round of voting went much as had been expected, although before it started, most pundits had put Sheikh Salman slightly ahead of Infantino.
As expected, neither of the other two candidates, Frenchman Jerome Champagne and Jordanian Prince Ali bin-Hussein, stood a chance. Champagne saw his seven first-round votes melt away to none in the second round, while Prince Ali dropped from 27 to four.
Tokyo Sexwale was the life of the party, but pulled out before the first round.
The fifth candidate, Tokyo Sexwale of South Africa, livened up what was a largely dry affair with a stirring and often funny pre-election speech – before announcing that he was dropping out before the first ballot.
Reform package passes easily
Now that Infantino has been elected, his main job will be to lead the implementation of a package of reforms that were passed by a vote of 179-22 earlier on Friday.
The reforms, which had been presented to the delegates earlier, include limits of three four-year terms for FIFA presidents and other senior officials. The powerful Executive Committee, which seems to have been a magnet for corruption, is to be replaced by an Executive Council that will operate in a similar way to a corporate board of directors.
The role that Infantino takes on as president has also been curbed. He will provide strategic leadership but have less management authority than Blatter enjoyed. Under the new system, the secretary general is to be FIFA’s effective CEO, with the general secretariat that he heads to be in charge of day-to-day operations.
The reforms also call for more women to take on leadership roles, including a provision that requires each confederation elect at least one female representative to the Executive Council.
Also among the reforms are several measures meant to improve financial transparency at soccer’s world governing body.
OPINION
Now, it’s time for FIFA’s president to deliver
FIFA billed its congress as a watershed moment where it would start putting its troubles behind it. Whether that turns out to be the case depends on whether Gianni Infantino can deliver, writes DW’s Chuck Penfold.
In hindsight, it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise that Gianni Infantino won the race to become the man to finish former longtime FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s last term in office.
As if we almost needed reminding at the start of the voting process, this was an extraordinary Congress brought on by Blatter’s controversial re-election last May, followed within days by the announcement that he would step down. All of which was followed months later by an eight-year ban from football, which has since been reduced to six. As such, Infantino will simply finish the term that Blatter started last May.
Prior to the election, the Swiss-Italian had widely been seen as among the two front-runners for the president’s post but still trailing Sheik Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa. However, the jovial, glad-handing Infantino remained confident throughout the days leading up to the vote and never tired of recounting how many countries around the globe he had visited on his “journey” towards world football’s top job – often doing so in multiple languages. He also pointed to his years of experience in football administration while holding the UEFA’s second-biggest job.
But what went wrong with Sheikh Salman’s campaign? Were some of the 207 eligible delegates scared away by allegations that he was implicated in the violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in his native Bahrain in 2011? He denied any wrongdoing, but it seems he didn’t do enough to allay some delegates’ qualms.
German Executive Committee member Wolfgang Niersbach said as much after Sheikh Salman met with European delegates in a final campaign pitch on Thursday. This didn’t cost Sheikh Salman Germany’s vote, as they were squarely behind Infantino anyway, but it could have influenced others as FIFA looks to cross into a new era of good governance, integrity and transparency.
Now it is up to Gianni Infantino to implement all the high-minded reforms aimed at making the changes FIFA so desperately needs following the worst crisis in its history. Some have already criticized the reforms as not going far enough. But could we have really expected any more from this Congress than a small step forward? Anyway, pretty much everybody who stepped up to a microphone at Zurich’s Hallenstadion on Friday, stressed that enacting the reforms they did pass, would be just the beginning of cleaning up FIFA’s act – and that implementing them quickly is of the essence.
Like the other three candidates who made it to the vote, Infantino pledged to do just that. Now that he’s got the job that he traveled so far to get, it’s time for the new FIFA president to deliver.
-DW.COM