By Andrew Warshaw, chief correspondent
April 12 – Claims that UEFA are deliberately stalling FIFA’s reform process, designed to make football’s corridors of power more transparent and accountable, have been dismissed by UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino. FIFA advisors have laid the blame for many of the original reform proposals being blocked squarely at the feet of UEFA, not least integrity checks for senior officials.
Last month, after intensive negotiations, FIFA’s executive committee rubber-stamped a batch of firm proposals for Congress that included the following:
– Limits on the term and age limits for both the president and his Ex-Co members
– Future World Cup candidates to be shortlisted by the FIFA executive committee, with Congress to vote on the winner
– Whether Britain should lose its automatic Fifa vice-presidency with the seat instead going to Europe
– Expanding the executive committee to 27 members to include three women, one of them elected, the other two co-opted
– Integrity checks for future high-ranking officials
The integrity check proposal is considerably watered down from the original idea put forward by the FIFA-appointed Independent Governance Committee which called for an independent group of experts to do the vetting in order to protect FIFA from infiltration by dubious characters – and for those same experts to sit in on all FIFA executive committee meetings.
UEFA, the most influential of all six confederations, rejected this and said the checks had to be carried out by the confederations themselves, prompting accusations that European football’s governing body was neutering the entire process.
But Infantino said this was not the case and that IGC chief Mark Pieth, who led the concerns, was putting out a false message.
“He has not been well informed,” said Infantino, following his address at this week’s Soccerex conference in Manchester. “That’s a misrepresentation of UEFA’s position. We are in favour of independent checks.”
Infantino argued that such checks could still be entirely independent, even if the experts involved are selected at confederation level.
“We have to trust the confederations. What’s to stop them setting up independent bodies themselves? Besides we have already approved FIFA’s ethics committee making integrity checks – so that’s a double protection.”