European soccer leagues add to pressure on FIFA president Gianni Infantino amid ‘crisis’ meeting

Sto­ry by JAMES ROB­SON | The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

The as­so­ci­a­tion of Eu­ro­pean soc­cer leagues called for gov­er­nance re­form of FI­FA on Wednes­day, adding to the mount­ing pres­sure on pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no fol­low­ing his failed plan to sell stakes in the World Cup.

On the day that In­fan­ti­no re­port­ed­ly held a meet­ing with se­nior staff in Ra­bat, Mo­roc­co, Eu­ro­pean Leagues, which in­cludes top com­pe­ti­tions like the Pre­mier League, La Liga and Se­rie A, de­scribed the pro­pos­al as “dan­ger­ous” and said it point­ed to deep­er con­cerns about how world soc­cer’s gov­ern­ing body op­er­ates.

It said it raised “se­ri­ous ques­tions about FI­FA’s gov­er­nance, in­ter­nal cul­ture and de­ci­sion-mak­ing.”

“Now more than ever, FI­FA re­quires gov­er­nance re­form that en­sures that all rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers have a for­mal role in de­ci­sions that shape the fu­ture of our game.”

In the state­ment Eu­ro­pean Leagues hit out at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther ex­pand­ing the World Cup to 64 teams and said, “FI­FA must not be al­lowed to con­tin­ue tak­ing uni­lat­er­al­ly dis­rup­tive de­ci­sions.”

It said that un­til there was re­form it would re­ject the “ex­pan­sion or cre­ation” of FI­FA com­pe­ti­tions.

Por­tu­gal and Re­al Madrid great Luis Fi­go al­so called for In­fan­ti­no to step down, say­ing he had “de­based the of­fice.”

The lat­est con­dem­na­tions come af­ter a tu­mul­tuous week, which has raised ques­tions about his pres­i­den­cy of FI­FA ahead of elec­tions in March.

Eu­ro­pean soc­cer’s gov­ern­ing body UE­FA has ap­plied the most in­tense pres­sure by vot­ing to boy­cott the World Cup if In­fan­ti­no pressed ahead with the con­tro­ver­sial plans to sell prof­its in its top com­pe­ti­tion through a com­mer­cial sub­sidiary called FI­FA For­ward En­ter­prise (FFE) that would run tour­na­ments.

Even af­ter In­fan­ti­no’s climb­down UE­FA said it had lost con­fi­dence in FI­FA’s lead­er­ship — pos­si­bly paving the way for a chal­lenge to his pres­i­den­cy. The gov­ern­ing body for North and Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean soc­cer (CON­CA­CAF) al­so said FI­FA lead­er­ship had “stopped putting foot­ball first.”

On Tues­day top FI­FA of­fi­cials Ar­sène Wenger and sec­re­tary-gen­er­al Mat­tias Graf­ström dis­tanced them­selves from the FFE plans, which em­pha­sized di­vi­sions with­in the or­ga­ni­za­tion that were ev­i­dent when In­fan­ti­no’s se­nior ad­vis­er Car­los Cordeiro re­signed last week and chief op­er­at­ing of­fi­cer Kevin Lam­our said staff were “de­ceived” by the pres­i­dent’s lack of open­ness.

Wednes­day’s sum­mit in Ra­bat was dubbed a “cri­sis meet­ing” in me­dia re­ports amid grow­ing ex­pec­ta­tion that In­fan­ti­no will be chal­lenged in next year’s elec­tion when he was aim­ing for to win a fourth and fi­nal term in of­fice.