FIFA President Gianni Infantino apologized to his toughest critics on Thursday at a showdown meeting of FIFA’s ruling council in Zurich, but he offered no new details or documents on the issues that concern them most.
No documents were provided about the $4.2 billion World Cup sell-off plan that Infantino launched and then dropped in July. No details emerged about the Folarin Balogun red card case at the World Cup or how U.S. President Donald Trump intervened to help the national team advance.
World football’s governing body will, however, review whether to continue awarding the peace prize that was created to give to Trump last December.
Pressure from European officials
European football officials pressed Infantino for written evidence about his secretive private equity plan for the World Cup, which triggered a global rift. Infantino asked them to submit written questions instead, according to Debbie Hewitt, a FIFA vice president who leads the English Football Association, after the 3½-hour meeting.
“The man has to answer those questions. If he doesn’t answer those questions, no, he is not fit to be the FIFA president,” Hewitt said.
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) is leading attempts to remove Infantino before or at the FIFA presidential election in March, and the meeting did little to change that stance. Bernd Neuendorf, the German football federation leader and one of eight UEFA delegates on the 37-member council that Infantino chairs, said the council had not met since the crisis began.
“No satisfactory answers were provided,” Neuendorf said. “We need a person of integrity, someone who can be expected to restore the reputation of the association, which has undoubtedly been lost.”
An apology and a contested investor plan
Infantino opened the meeting by apologizing to council colleagues for blindsiding them and creating a furor over his private investor plan with Joshua Kushner. Media reports revealed that plan nine days after the July World Cup final.
“He said that with some contrition,” Hewitt said.
UEFA has also asked courts in the United States for the right to obtain evidence for a criminal complaint against Infantino in Switzerland. The court filings allege possible mismanagement of FIFA finances through the value Infantino placed on the intended subsidiary that would run tournament commercial rights. Investors led by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were to own at least 20% of that subsidiary.