By Andrew Warshaw
September 20 – Gianni Infantino’s regime has come under renewed criticism over the already infamous ruling allowing members of FIFA’s new-look Council, supposedly a key element of FIFA’s reform process, to hire and fire independent governance officials.
The rule, tabled at the 11th hour at FIFA’s Congress in Mexico in May with Infantino’s backing, led to the immediate resignation of audit and compliance chief Domenico Scala in protest at what he described as a “smuggled in” agenda item that undermined the entire reform programme he had sought to implement.
Infantino has since been completely exonerated by FIFA’s ethics committee for any wrongdoing following a spate of allegations about his conduct in the early weeks of his FIFA presidency. Last week he told an ethics in sport summit at FIFA headquarters that he was now in charge of “an open organisation.”
But he still cannot escape considerable disapproval over what happened in Mexico, even among those with no particular axe to grind.
Denmark’s Allan Hansen (pictured), who worked under Scala and is still a member of the audit and compliance committee as well as a prominent UEFA executive committee member, says he was against the ruling which many observers feel has comprised FIFA’s independent bodies and cemented Infantino’s power base.
“I’m not in favour of that kind of rule and I made this clear,” Hansen told reporters on the fringes of a UEFA executive committee meeting in Athens last week that followed the UEFA presidential election. “Not if we should remain transparent and open. I can only guess why it happened. But it’s only on a provisional basis for 12 months until the next Congress and that makes sense.”
Hansen is a well-respected voice within European football circles and one of his strongest beliefs is that instead of one city always being put forward as a fait accompli, there should be a bidding process for staging major European club finals in the same way that nations bid for the World Cup and European Championships.
Kiev has just been announced as host of the 2018 Champions League final following a recommendation by UEFA’s club competitions committee but Hansen said: “For the future it would be fairer and more transparent to have a bidding process.”
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