Israel withdraws support for Infantino’s leadership
August 19 – The Israeli FA (IFA) have withdrawn support for FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
In the aftermath of his plan to sell the World Cup to private equity, the Israelis have become the latest European federation to back out of supporting his continuation as FIFA president.
A letter sent by IFA president Moshe Zuares, as reported by the Guardian, said that recent events have prompted an “unprecedented crisis of confidence”. Zuares also serves on UEFA’s executive committee.
Israel has been a member of UEFA since 1994. At the last FIFA Congress in Vancouver in May, Infantino sought to reunite the FAs of Israel and Palestine, but his ill-timed and ill-executed gambit flopped embarrassingly as Palestine FA president Jibril Rajoub didn’t shake the hand of IFA’s vice-president Basim Sheik Suliman.
The IFA’s position aligns with the European confederation, which last week issued a joint letter with Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), signalling that Infantino must go.
One by one, European nations, including England, Scotland and Wales, have withdrawn their support for Infantino, leaving his presidential future hanging by a thread.
He had been in cruise control to get re-elected next year at the FIFA Congress in Rabat, Morocco, but plans to set up the commercial entity FIFA Forward Enterprise, that would hive off FIFA’s World Cup commercial rights, coupled with his desired shift to become a US-style ‘sports commissioner’ sitting over those rights, backfired spectacularly
The plan was set against the backdrop of FIFA having just completed the most lucrative global finals in history in the US, Mexico and Canada in June and July, which generated more than $15 billion in revenue.
Earlier this week, FIFA’s COO Kevin Lamour, who was previously at UEFA, departed Zurich after two. He had criticised the aborted private equity plans and said FIFA staff had been “deceived” by Infantino. Lise Klaveness called the dismissal “management by fear” in an interview with the Associated Press.
It has become a common theme amongst critics of Infantino’s FIFA leadership who say that his “fearmongering” management of staff and FIFA’s member associations over their grant money entitlements, has to stop.
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