At showdown FIFA meeting, Infantino apologizes for World Cup furor but leaves critics unhappy
ZURICH (AP) — Gianni Infantino gave an apology to the toughest critics who want to oust him as FIFA president but no new details or documents on issues that most concern them at a showdown meeting of the ruling council of soccer's governing body on Thursday.
Infantino provided no documents about the $4.2 billion World Cup sell-off plan he launched and quickly dropped in July.
Nor did he give details to explain the Folarin Balogun red-card case at the World Cup or how U.S. President Donald Trump intervened to help the national team forward.
FIFA will, however, review whether to continue awarding the peace prize that was created to give to Trump last December.
Infantino was pressed by European soccer officials for written evidence about his secretive private equity plan for the World Cup with investor Joshua Kushner, which provoked a global rift and the biggest crisis of his near 11-year presidency.
He frustrated them further by asking for written questions, FIFA vice president Debbie Hewitt said after the 3 1/2-hour meeting that is the last before a Nov. 18 deadline to field an election candidate to challenge him.
“The man has to answer those questions. If he doesn’t answer those questions, no, he is not fit to be the FIFA president," said Hewitt, who leads the English Football Association.
Infantino did not meet with media at FIFA headquarters Thursday.
European soccer's ruling body UEFA is leading attempts to remove Infantino before or at the FIFA presidential election in March and heard little to change that view Thursday.
“No satisfactory answers were provided,” said German soccer leader Bernd Neuendorf, one of eight UEFA delegates in the 37-member FIFA Council that Infantino chairs.
The council is the main decision-making body at FIFA with a global spread of officials — most are presidents of their national federation, like Cindy Parlow Cone of the U.S. — who are elected by their continental soccer bodies for four-year terms.
FIFA pays each an annual stipend of $250,000, with $300,000 for the continental presidents.
Infantino infuriated soccer leaders in Europe, North America and Asia by working for months in secret on the Kushner plan. It deepened a long-standing perception in UEFA that the FIFA boss plans his biggest projects without consulting them.
“We need a person of integrity, someone who can be expected to restore the reputation of the association, which has undoubtedly been lost,” Neuendorf told reporters.
Infantino did start the meeting by apologizing to his Council colleagues for blindsiding them and creating a furor over his private investor plan with Kushner that was revealed in media reports nine days after the World Cup final in July.
“He said that with some contrition,” Hewitt said.
For most of the last 50 years, FIFA voters from Africa — which now counts 54 of the 211 member federations — have been key to gaining and staying in power.
“The key point for us,” said FIFA Council member Ahmed Yahya, the head of Mauritania’s soccer federation, “is that we see Gianni as the right person to continue leading football.”
Infantino's offer to add $15 million in FIFA funding to each of the 211 members over the next four years made progress Thursday.
“I’ve said that President Gianni Infantino is taking football forward worldwide," Yahya said. "I come from the African continent and know what I’m talking about.
The FIFA presidential election meeting is on March 18 in Rabat, Morocco — a political ally of Infantino, whose soccer leader Fouzi Lekjaa is an influential council member and which will co-host the 2030 World Cup.
The FIFA Council should next meet on Dec. 16 in Doha, Qatar — the 2022 World Cup host that still is loyal to Infantino.
Another ally is Azerbaijan — whose most senior soccer official Elkhan Mammadov is an aide in Infantino's inner circle — which will host a global boys' tournament for under-15 teams later this month. That event shapes to be a lobbying opportunity for his campaign.
FIFA also will host an online extra congress on Nov. 23 — five days after the candidate deadline — to confirm hosts for the Women's World Cup in 2031 and 2035. The only bids are a U.S.-Mexico-Costa Rica-Jamaica plan for 2031 and the four British federations for 2035.
UEFA also has asked courts in the United States for the right to get evidence for a criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland. The court filings allege possible mismanagement of FIFA finances in the value he put on the intended subsidiary running tournament commercial rights.
It was to be at least 20% owned by investors led by Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
FIFA lawyers' filings in response to stall or stop the evidence requests said they were a “smear campaign” by UEFA.
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