Infantino talks up bringing Africa to table of men

After courting the Confederations of African Football (Caf) in Kigali recently, the five Fifa presidential candidates proceeded to Miami, Florida (on Friday, Feb 12) to individually seek Concacaf members’ support.

The five include Bahraini Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim al Khalifa – who got endorsement from Caf executive committee - although member associations still have the democratic freedom to vote for a candidate of their choice on February 26.

Others are Uefa general secretary Gianni Infantino from Switzerland; Prince Ali bin al-Hussein from Jordan, former Fifa international relations director Jerome Champagne – a Frenchman ; and South African businessman Tokyo Sexwale.

While in Kigali, during the Africa Nations Championship (Chan), SCORE’s Andrew Mwanguhya caught up with Italian-Swiss Infantino, who first entered the race as a standby replacement for banned Michel Platini.

Below Infantino explains his various plans, if elected, including specifics for Africa.

Qn: Fifa has undergone a painful last nine months. Hardly inspiring stuff, huh!
Infantino: It’s a complicated situation. But one of the things we have to do very fast is make football the centre of the stage (again). Today when you speak about Fifa, you speak about many things, but you don’t speak about football. And this we have to change.

I live football; I breathe football, and I am passionate about football. I think that is exactly what Fifa needs today - to come back to football. I’ve been travelling to various places in Africa in the last few days, and will be travelling to more places before the election. I found the same passion. People are clearly passionate and motivated and organising football in very difficult and complicated situations.

You talk glowingly about Africa’s passion. What is Africa’s importance to Fifa and to your bid for presidency?
It’s very, very important, it’s crucial. I mean, Africa is the passion of football. Considering myself, and I say this with the European association as well - I’m not a European candidate - I’m a candidate for football.

And football is the top sport in Africa. Everyone in the streets, everyone on the pitches; they want to participate and Africa, of course, with the 54 countries has something to say.

Why should Africa vote for you?
Because I’m a football person and because Africa is a football continent. It’s as simple as that. You know we can speak and, of course, we have to do reforms, bring in transparency, good governance. This we have to do it and this for me goes without saying. But more than that, we have to listen to associations.

That is why I’m going to the ground…, to speak with the people, to understand what their problems are because it’s not somebody in office in Zurich who knows what Nigeria football wants, what Rwanda and Ugandan football needs. It’s the people here, on the pitch who know what the needs are, and I’m the man who is going to speak to them, who is going to understand them, who is going to open the doors of Fifa to Africa.

Fifa has been riddled with one corruption scandal after another. What are you going to do about it?
I think we need to restore Fifa. It is very clear that Fifa’s image is at its very low at the moment. We need to bring back Fifa’s reputation as the world governing body of football that has to be respectful and a respected organisation.

How will you do that?
Well, by opening up Fifa, by making it completely transparent. I think one of the keys is to ensure full transparency on the money flows in Fifa – the money coming in and the money going out. The resources are there. Fifa does not have to be ashamed of generating money. Fifa has got to be proud of generating money. This money is there for developing football.

We have to inject this money back into football and we have to do it in an open and transparent way.

Not because people are my friends, or my enemies, they should or should not get development projects, development grants. It’s there for them. We have to make sure that we invest in the right way. We have to (also) introduce term limits, for example, at the Fifa level. We need to bring in the highest standards of compliance.

Again this is something I live; this is my experience in my day-to-day work in Uefa. Seven years as general secretary, over 15 years in the organisation… I know how to deal with these matters.

You hinted about opening doors of Fifa to the world. What do you mean exactly?
One of my proposals as well is say, if the president is European, then the general secretary does not have to be. Until now, the general secretaries have always been not only European but Western European.

People are capable of leadership, why not an African, an Asian? We have to set some symbols; we have to open the doors of transparency.
I have very specific plans for Africa; in terms of increasing the number of African teams in the World Cup from five to seven, or maybe eight and increasing the seats of African members on the Fifa executive committee of the Council from four to seven.

Gianni Infantino
Age: 45
Nationality: Italian/Swiss
Current position:
Uefa general secretary (since 2009)
Previous positions:
Joined Uefa in 2000 as a lawyer and secretary general of the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) at the University of Neuchâtel