With two weeks left for the election into the office of president of FIFA, the campaign among the four major candidates is heating up.
The fifth candidate, South Africa’s Tokyo Sexwale, dumped by his Confederation of African Football appeared to have silently stepped aside.
Exciting the presidential candidates is Gianni Infantino’s plan for an expanded 40-team World Cup. And it came under blistering attack from two of his rivals in Miami, Florida on Thursday.
Four of the five candidates to replace Sepp Blatter in the Feb. 26 election in Zurich gave presentations to members of the CONCACAF confederation, which governs the sport in North and Central America and the Caribbean, at an airport hotel in Miami.
Normally such meetings take place behind closed doors but CONCACAF officials allowed the media into the room for a rare taste of how the FIFA candidates make their pitch to the electorate — the heads of national football federations.
The protocol in such occasions is usually for candidates to avoid public criticism of each other.
UEFA general secretary Infantino’s plan to create eight new spots in the World Cup was attacked by both Asian Football Confederation president Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa and former FIFA deputy general secretary Jerome Champagne, however.
Salman gave a powerpoint presentation of his manifesto and when he discussed FIFA’s biggest tournament, the words on the screen read “Promises of more World Cup spots during an election period are unprofessional”.
The Bahraini said any changes should be well explained and gain broad support before being introduced.
Champagne was sharper in his condemnation of Infantino’s proposal.
“My programme is not smoke and mirrors,” the Frenchman said. “They are facts and not the kind of projects that are being thrown around like organising a World Cup with 40 teams when we know that is not the central issue for 150 federations around the world.
“We know that organising a World Cup with 32 teams is already so costly and so difficult. We know also that the international calendar is so complicated,” he added.
Infantino defended his plan.
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