Election Day
- Feb 26, 2016
- 3 min read
After a corruption scandal shook the core of FIFA’s corporate offices in May, Sepp Blatter announced his resignation as president in June, days after he had been reelected. Blatter is currently serving a six year ban from football due to his involvenment.
Today, elections were held to determine the new president, rather it be Gianna Infantino, Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein and former FIFA executive Jerome Champagne.
After two rounds of voting –no candidate earned the required two-thirds majority of votes in the initial voting process- a winner was determined. Gianni Infantino will succeed Blatter as the new president of FIFA.
The 45-year-old UEFA general secretary, sports administrator and lawyer who joined European football’s governing body in 200 and climbed the figurative ladder became FIFA’s first new president in 18 years.
Infantino won the election with 115 of the 207 votes from FIFA’s national associations, he beat out Khalifa who had 88 votes, Hussein had four votes and Champagne had no votes.
Infantino’s acceptance speech was one full of emotion, but also keeping it professional.
“Dear friends, I cannot express my feelings in this moment, I told you I went through a journey, an exceptional journey, a journey which made me meet many fantastic people, many people who love football, who live football, who breathe football every day and many people who deserve that FIFA is highly respected. And we will restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA, and everyone in the world will applaud us and will applaud all of you for what we’ll do in FIFA in the future. We have to be proud of FIFA, and everyone has to be proud of FIFA and we have to be proud of what we’ll do together in FIFA.”
In the first round of voting, Infantino fell 50 votes short of securing the election but he still led the round with 88 of the votes and Khalifa trailed with 85. In the second round, the rules changed a bit, the winner only needed a simple majority and the voters were allowed to change their selections.
Today became the first time voting for the FIFA presidential election reached a second round since 1974, when Joao Havelange of Brazil became the first non-European president ahead of England’s Sir Stanley Rous.
In a statement, Blatter praised Infantino’s “experience, expertise, strategic and diplomatic skills”. Really, who cares, this man is banned and months ago was drowning in scandal accusations, so I will ask, who really cares about his statement?
Infantino who is an avid Inter Milan fan was better known as being the face of televised Champions League draws ubtil this campaign, now the Swiss-Italian is responsible for the whole world of football, making quite the dramatic jump.
Which makes this victory that much better is that Infantino was initially placed on the ballad as a stand-in for UEFA president Michel Platini who was banned from running after FIFA banned him from all football related activities over a “disloyal payment” that Blatter made to him. Infantino being forever a good guy said he would stand down if Platini’s ban had been overturned.
Infantino is credited with running UEFA’s day-to-day operations during a commercial boom.
Infantino has a tall task ahead of him as he inherits Blatter’s governing body with its reputation at an all time low and a far reaching, global bribary scandal hitting staff morale and FIFA’s cash flow.
In his pre-election speech today, Infantino spoke in five languages for the first 75 seconds without notes and portrayed himself as a leader for the world, not just his own confederation.
“We have to get Europe to do much more,” Infantino said.
During his campaign, he promised more key FIFA gifts to member federations: more guaranteed funding from FIFA’s $5 billion-plus World Cup revenue, more places in an expanded 40-team tournament and more opportunities to stage the World Cup with multinational regional hosting.
Earlier today, FIFA members voted in favor of proposed reforms to address issues of governance, accountability, transparency and diversity.
“FIFA has gone through sad times, moments of crisis, but those times are over.” Infantino said. “We need to implement the reform and implement good governance and transparency. We also need to have respect. We’re going to win back this respect through hard work, commitement and we’re going to make sure we can finally focus on this wonderful game that is football.”
As fans, we will be waiting to see if Gianni Infantino will be able to bring the focus back to the game of football.
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