UEFA general secretary, Gianni Infantino, will stand for the FIFA presidency, European football’s governing body has announced.
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“Gianni has completed a terrific job at UEFA, has a confirmed monitor document as a top class administrator and constructed constructive relations with soccer stakeholders across the globe”. The global Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, had called on Fifa to change its statutes to allow a credible candidate from outside the world of football to lead reform of the organisation.
Infantino is in the process of submitting the required nominations and will issue a statement¿ later, it added.
There are now eight candidates in the election and there could yet be a ninth entry to the contest before Monday night’s 11pm deadline – Brazilian great Zico. “He is within the strategy of submitting the required nominations and can challenge a press release on his candidacy later in the present day”.
Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim has been the AFC president since May 2013 and the president of Bahrain Football Association since 2002.
South Korean businessman Chung Mong Joon meanwhile officially withdrew his candidacy following a six-year suspension imposed by FIFA’s ethics committee for breaches of the ethics code.
UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino, the man who is the public face of the Champions League and Europa League draws, has joined the race for the Federation Internationale de Football Association presidency and will stand for election as the successor to Sepp Blatter in February.
The unprecedentedly crowded field includes serious and credible candidates from Africa, Europe and Asia, which will test the strength of Fifa’s traditional continental voting blocs and the alliances within it, perhaps to beyond their limits. “I don’t want to go into any race that I can not win”, Bility told the AP. “Since the peaceful anti-government protests of 2011, which the authorities responded to with brutal and lethal force, the al-Khalifa family have overseen a campaign of torture and mass incarceration that has decimated Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement”.
The 49-year-old Sheikh Salman is one of seven contenders who have declared their candidacies before Monday’s filing deadline.
Gianni Infantino has vowed to put football development at the top of FIFA’s agenda if he is successful in the presidential elections next year.
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“I can assure anyone that the BFA is being guided according to the highest possible governance standards of integrity and transparency – fully in line with the AFC and Fifa statutes, and no action has been taken under my direction against any member of the football community”.
