Gianni Infantino is endorsed by the Asian Football Confederation for another term as FIFA president

The Asian Foot­ball Con­fed­er­a­tion has en­dorsed Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no for an­oth­er term as FI­FA pres­i­dent in an ap­par­ent turn­around in its stance from two months ago when it crit­i­cized the head of soc­cer’s world gov­ern­ing body for a breach of trust.

AFC pres­i­dent Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khal­i­fa em­braced In­fan­ti­no with a large hug Fri­day in front of the Asian mem­ber­ship at an ex­tra­or­di­nary con­gress meet­ing in Tokyo, where he de­liv­ered his en­dorse­ment. It was a time­ly boost for In­fan­ti­no as he cam­paigns for re-elec­tion amid strong op­po­si­tion from Eu­rope

“We af­firm our full com­mit­ment to sup­port­ing you and your lead­er­ship as you seek a new man­date as the FI­FA pres­i­dent,” Sheikh Salman said. “You’ve vis­it­ed a lot of coun­tries in Asia. I’ve spo­ken to a lot of mem­bers with­in this con­ti­nent. I know your feel­ing and I think your com­mit­ment is clear as well.”

The AFC has 47 mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions. Even if all the mem­bers don’t fol­low the di­rec­tion of Sheikh Salman, those votes could be a key to guar­an­tee­ing an­oth­er man­date for In­fan­ti­no.

The FI­FA elec­tion is in March and the dead­line for can­di­dates to file against In­fan­ti­no is Nov. 18. So far none has filed.

Ad­dress­ing his re­marks to In­fan­ti­no, Sheikh Salman in­di­cat­ed not every AFC mem­ber would go along with the en­dorse­ment, but most will.

“My feel­ing is, I’m sure, the feel­ing of most of my mem­bers,” he said. “And I’ve said that to you.”

In­fan­ti­no’s re-elec­tion chances have been en­hanced by FI­FA’s plans to in­crease con­tri­bu­tions to mem­ber as­so­ci­a­tions from $10 mil­lion to $25 mil­lion, which he ref­er­enced Fri­day.

The AFC meet­ing was closed to the me­dia, as were AFC meet­ings in Tokyo on Tues­day and Wednes­day. The of­fi­cial events were broad­cast on the AFC’s YouTube chan­nel.

An abrupt about-face

This is an abrupt turn­around for Sheikh Salman. In Au­gust, the AFC joined the soc­cer gov­ern­ing bod­ies of Eu­rope, and North and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca in say­ing that In­fan­ti­no had com­mit­ted a “fun­da­men­tal breach of trust.”

In­fan­ti­no apol­o­gized last week in Zurich to FI­FA’s 37-mem­ber rul­ing coun­cil — which he chairs — for “mis­takes” he made in as­sem­bling a now-scrapped $4.2 bil­lion plan for the World Cup.

Sheikh Salman ref­er­enced the dif­fer­ences with In­fan­ti­no in his speech Fri­day, but glossed over any de­tails.

“Gi­an­ni, I want to make it clear. Yes, we had some is­sues we spoke about in the past,” Sheikh Salman said. “But let’s not re­late the two things to­geth­er. I think the last few (times) we met in Zurich you made it clear that there’s a true un­der­stand­ing be­tween us.”

“The past I’m sure is part of our his­to­ry,” he added, “We’ve all, I’m sure, learned im­por­tant lessons from it. What mat­ters now is how we move for­ward to­geth­er. I think every­one has ques­tions and I’m sure the an­swers we be avail­able, whether to us in Asia, or the rest of the world.”

An As­so­ci­at­ed Press tal­ly pub­lished ear­li­er this month in­di­cat­ed In­fan­ti­no — even be­fore the AFC en­dorse­ment — is edg­ing to­ward a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty of the 211 FI­FA mem­ber fed­er­a­tions.

In­fan­ti­no’s elec­tion­eer­ing around the globe

In­fan­ti­no has been trav­el­ing the globe to pro­mote a new fund­ing mod­el, sup­port­ed last week by FI­FA’s Coun­cil, which of­fers mil­lions more dol­lars in fi­nan­cial sup­port for small and large soc­cer coun­tries.

“Thank you for be­ing here,” Sheikh Salman said to In­fan­ti­no. “I know you have been every­where. I’m sure that you set a record for be­ing in al­most every coun­try.”

Sheikh Salman then joked that, per­haps, In­fan­ti­no had a “clone.”

That drew a laugh. But the largest ap­plause came at the end of his brief ad­dress when he again re­peat­ed his sup­port for In­fan­ti­no.

“As one Asian fam­i­ly we are ready to move for­ward, unit­ed in your sup­port, Gi­an­ni,” Sheikh Salman added. “I want to make that clear to­day.”

In­fan­ti­no ac­cepts the sup­port

In­fan­ti­no took the podi­um fol­low­ing Sheikh Salman and kept it light. But he did ac­knowl­edge some er­rors.

“When you do many things, you do — hope­ful­ly, as we did, many good things — you do some mis­takes as well,” In­fan­ti­no said. “The im­por­tant thing, how­ev­er, is, as you said, to learn al­ways from the ex­pe­ri­ence, from the mis­takes, to apol­o­gize, to move ahead, to come to­geth­er, to unite, to build for our fu­ture, for your fu­ture.”

The largest ap­plause came as he men­tioned how, since he took the lead­er­ship in 2016, more fund­ing is flow­ing.

“Be­fore I start­ed as FI­FA pres­i­dent — each of you, some of you are still (here) and still re­mem­ber — that time,” In­fan­ti­no said. “Each of you was re­ceiv­ing $1 mil­lion US dol­lars every four years. As of the first of Jan­u­ary of next year, it will be $25 mil­lion US dol­lars.” —TOKYO (AP)

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Sto­ry by STEPHEN WADE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press