By Andrew Warshaw
October 25 – Former FIFA presidential candidate Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan says football’s world governing body has got its priorities wrong under Gianni Infantino, the man who beat him to the sport’s most powerful position.
Infantino was elected in February with the task of regaining global trust following a series of corruption scandals which plunged the governing body into crisis.
But in an interview with Reuters, the Jordanian FA chief said Infantino is focussing on the wrong areas and should be cleaning up the organisation rather than talking about issues such as expanding the World Cup.
Infantino would doubtless argue that FIFA’s recently unveiled 70-page roadmap for future operations demonstrates it is going about things the right way but Prince Ali countered: “I can only speculate as a new president he first has to look at his own administration and see what’s going on in there.”
“Everybody is looking at FIFA and the direction it is going and again it’s critical time, there no time to lose.”
As well as the US-led corruption probe that has seen 42 people and entities, including some of its FIFA’s most influential powerbrokers, indicted since May last year, criminal investigations are also under way in Switzerland while a separate probe is ongoing into the award of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups to Russia and Qatar respectively.
“You really need to have a clean FIFA to be able to trickle down to our national associations,” said Prince Ali, the only FIFA presidential candidate to lose two elections and no longer a member of FIFA’s inner circle. “The reality is putting aside the big ideas in the World Cup, the real issue is the organisation and cleaning it up for me I wish it will be more streamlined, more open and that’s what I am hoping will take place.”
Implying that Infantino’s pledge to increase the World Cup finals from 32 to either 40 or 48 teams was more political than practical – a view shared by many other observers – he added: “When it comes to FIFA, at the moment there are other priorities really … my only concern is that it’s maybe more political and about pleasing people than what is best for the game.”
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