FIFA elect a new President

[Chicog]

I would like to see him start by demanding a full audit of what money has been granted to individual Associations, and where it has been spent.

And if they can't provide it, ban them from all international competition until they can, or they have identified and removed the people who misused it.

Too much to ask?

Gianni Infantino won FIFA's presidential election and vowed to lead the scandal-tainted body into a new era as he faced immediate calls to ensure genuine reform.

The 45-year-old UEFA general secretary scored a convincing victory in the battle to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter, whose 18-year reign ended with FIFA mired in unprecedented crisis.

Infantino, a Swiss-Italian, defeated Asian rival Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa in the second round of the vote of 207 members.

"FIFA has gone through sad times, moments of crisis, but those times are over," he said, asserting that a "new era" had begun for world's football's governing body, dogged by a vast set of corruption scandals.

Blatter, who many hold responsible for the culture of patronage and graft that plagued FIFA, congratulated Infantino on his win.

"With his experience, his capacities, his sense of strategy and diplomacy, he has all the qualities to continue my work," Blatter said in a statement.

Infantino got 115 votes in the election's second round while Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman, from Bahrain, got 88. They were just three votes apart in the first round.

Five candidates started the day in contention.

Prince Ali bin al Hussein of Jordan and former FIFA official Jerome Champagne saw their support fizzle after the first round, while South African tycoon Tokyo Sexwale withdrew before polling opened.

Infantino said he would have no trouble uniting world football after an election which exposed divides between Europe, Infantino's power base, and voters in Asia and Africa.

"Today it was an election but not a war," the new FIFA supremo told reporters. "In an election you win or lose and then life goes on."

Sheikh Salman said he was looking forward to working with his campaign rival, and called for "unity" while stressing that FIFA needed to be more "inclusive and reflect the diversity of world football".

Infantino's election was hailed by world figures such as Russia's President Vladimir Putin and federation chiefs.

Putin, whose country will host the 2018 World Cup, said Infantino comes into the post with "high authority".

[champers]

Same old, same old. Platini's deputy and endorsed by Putin. Still, looks like England might now get the World Cup in 2030; if we kiss enough backsides whilst holding our collective noses.

[jellydog]

Yes Chiccy, way too much to ask. A nice sentiment though. The bent minnows, and not so minnowish, will continue to have an outsized say on international football decisions. An eternal legacy from non-discriminating Blatter.

[SantiSuk]

I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S NOT BLATTER!

Headline from one of the hack/wag teams of the popular press in the UK this morning.

One of the things I miss about Britain is that even the most po-faced can come up with great wit from time to time

[RickBradford]

Some media outlets are not impressed.....

Blatter was a bald-headed, white guy from Switzerland with a background in sports administration, educated at the University of Lausanne and born in Visp in the canton of Valais.

Infantino is a bald-headed, white guy from Switzerland with a background in sports administration, educated at the University of Fribourg and born in Brig, 10km from Visp in the canton of Valais.

The two life-forms likeliest to survive in a post-apocalyptic landscape are cockroaches and Fifa executives, who will have hoarded all the breathing apparatus, piled into a secret shelter, then struck a deal with the mutant, radioactive insects by promising to let them host the next World Cup.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11596740

[Jockstar]

Football’s governing body FIFA was forced to adopt radical reforms after being threatened by the US Department of Justice with being declared a criminal organisation on a par with the mafia, a senior official disclosed on the weekend.

Such a move would have led to the freezing of the organisation’s assets. Sponsors would also have deserted FIFA, effectively shutting it down.

The disclosure came as FIFA officials embarked on a reform package agreed by the FIFA congress in Zurich on Friday where UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino was elected president to succeed Sepp Blatter.

Under the reform package, the president’s powers will be restricted and the length of office capped at three terms of four years each. Other measures include the publication of executive pay and greater powers for the secretary-general of the organisation, who will be appointed in May.

“I said in my manifesto — and I believe in it — if the president is me, the general secretary will not be European,” Infantino said.

“We’ll have to look into that. But we have time for that, we will discuss it and we will see what is the best choice for FIFA and for football.”

FIFA’s frantic efforts to avoid being declared a criminal organisation were revealed by a senior source yesterday. The organisation was told by investigators that only three people at FIFA were not suspects or potential witnesses.

In an attempt to counter the threat, FIFA employed US law firm Quinn Emanuel to conduct internal inquiries into the organisation and forward any evidence of suspected corruption to the Justice Department. The strategy is to ensure that FIFA is treated as a “victim” of crime rather than as a perpetrator.

It emerged last week that Swiss prosecutors investigating bribes in the Qatar and Russia World Cup bids have uncovered 152 “suspicious transactions”.

In a statement to The Sunday Times the Swiss attorney-­general’s office said that “suspicious transactions” have been uncovered “regarding the allocation of the football World Cups in Russia and Qatar and the criminal proceedings against the acting president of FIFA Joseph Blatter”.

Banks including HSBC and Barclays have been co-operating with Swiss investigators to identify suspect payments. The number of charges, indictments and suspected bribes has been growing over the past year. The US Department of Justice has charged more than 40 individuals and indicted 27 in connection with corruption and bribery in FIFA.

On the day Infantino ascen­ded to the presidency, authorities announced that another football official, Rafael Esquivel, former president of Venezuela’s football federation, will be extradited from Switzerland to the US where he faces 20 years in jail.

British Conservative MP Damian Collins, who has campaigned for FIFA reforms, said it had made the right choice in Infantino but it was still “not out of the woods”.

“It is going to be incredibly challenging. Everyone expects there to be further FBI arrests and the investigations are going to take years,” Collins said.

“Infantino has a very narrow window in which to establish genuine credentials as someone who wants to change the cultures and practices of the organisations. He needs to fully implement the reforms that have been voted on.”

A top FIFA insider confirmed that Infantino will have a substantially lower salary than Blatter, whose estimated pay of £6 million ($11.7m) will be revealed in coming months, and unlike Blatter he will get no bonuses.

Blatter is appealing against a six-year football ban, imposed after he broke FIFA rules related to a £1.3m payment to former UEFA president Michel Platini.

The source said the expelled former president will keep his chauffeured limousine and expenses for first and business-class travel until the appeal is resolved but will have to pay rent on his FIFA apartment.

Bonita Mersiades, who blew the whistle on the FIFA malpractice that she saw as a member of the Australian World Cup bid team, said: “It’s difficult to be too optimistic when we know that if he had stood yesterday Sepp Blatter would have won. And it’s no coincidence that some of Infantino’s election promises are straight out of the Sepp Blatter and Mohamed bin Hammam playbook.

“The most obvious one is the ‘cash splash’ of $US5m ($7m) to each of the 209 football associations and a further $US40m to each of the six confederations. It’s a tried-and-tested formula that would have been music to the ears of many congress members.”

Greg Dyke, chairman of the Football Association, welcomed Infantino’s win. “The last thing FIFA needed was another president bringing a pile of suspicious baggage into the job,” he said. “Gianni comes in clean, his record as UEFA’s general secretary is first-class and will stand him in good stead.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/the-times-sport/us-department-of-justice-claims-fifa-acted-like-mafia/news-story/3af6db12f309326d78a44ae72296adac

[mrbojangles]

On the day Infantino ascen­ded to the presidency, authorities announced that another football official, Rafael Esquivel, former president of Venezuela’s football federation, will be extradited from Switzerland to the US where he faces 20 years in jail.

Wow. He must have been upto lots of no good