Gianni Infantino won the FIFA president elections
ahead of Asian
Football Confederation, Sheikh
Salman, former FIFA executive Jerome
Champagne of
France and Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan. to become president
of the world football’s governing body.
Sheikh Salman had
been a favourite candidate to succeed Sepp
Blatter because
of the support he had from Asia and Africa, while Infantino had the backing of UEFA members.
But following a second round of voting, needing 104 votes to
win, Infantino polled 115 and was named FIFA
president until 2019 – the second successive Swiss president.
However, this is first time voting for the FiFA
presidential election had reached a second round since 1974, when João
Havelange of
Brazil became the first non-European president ahead of England’s Sir Stanley
Rous.
The 45-year-old lawyer and UEFA secretary general, Gianni Infantino, is from Brig in
the Valais region of Switzerland, less than six miles from Blatter’s hometown
of Visp.
His
acceptances speech after the cut.......
“Dear
friends, I cannot express my feelings in this moment,” Infantino told the Fifa Congress. “I told you I
went through a journey, an exceptional journey, a journey which made me meet a
lot of fantastic people, who love football and breath football and live football every day.
“We will restore the image of Fifa and the respect of Fifa and
everyone in the world will applaud us. I want to work with all of you together
in order to restore and rebuild a new era of Fifa where we can put again
football at the centre of the stage. Fifa has gone through sad times, moments
of crisis, but those times are over. 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, commitment and we’re going to
make sure we can finally focus on this wonderful game that is football.”
Source: GY
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