UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino was elected as FIFA’s new president on Friday.
According to ESPN, Infantino got 115 of 207 votes in the second round to beat Sheikh Salman Bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa who had 88 votes. Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein of Jordan had four votes while former FIFA executive Jerome Champagne of France did not have any votes in the second round. Hussein had 27 votes and Champagne had seven votes in the first round. It was the first time since 1974 that a FIFA presidential election went to a second round.
"Dear friends, I cannot express my feelings in this moment," Infantino said. "I told you I went through a journey, an exceptional journey, a journey which made me meet many fantastic people -- many people who love football, who live football, who breathe football every day, and many people who deserve that FIFA is highly respected. And we will restore the image of FIFA and the respect of FIFA, and everyone in the world will applaud us and will applaud all of you for what we'll do in FIFA in the future.
"We have to be proud of FIFA, and everyone has to be proud of FIFA and we have to be proud of what we'll do together in FIFA."
Infantino replaces Sepp Blatter, who announced his resignation in June after a corruption scandal and is serving a six-year ban from the sport. He becomes FIFA’s first new president in 18 years. In his campaign he promised that FIFA member federations would get more guaranteed funding from FIFA’s $5 billion-plus World Cup revenue, more places in an expanded 40-team tournament and more opportunities to host the World Cup with multi-national regional hosting, according to the Associated Press.
Infantino will be president through May 2019, which is the remainder of Blatter’s term.
FIFA also passed a series of reforms on Friday. Those reforms include a 36-member FIFA Council, which replaces the FIFA Executive Committee and will oversee FIFA’s overall strategic direction, the FIFA president , FIFA Council, members of the Audit and Compliance Committee and member of FIFA’s judicial bodies being limited to three four-year terms in office as well as background checks for candidates for the FIFA Congress, the Washington Post noted. It will be interesting to see if Infantino can turn FIFA around and make it respectable again.