Ian Maxwell, the SFA chief executive, today hit out at Gianni Infantino, the FIFA president, for tarnishing this summer’s hugely successful World Cup with his controversial plan to sell off the tournament and stated there needs to be change at the top of world football’s governing body.
Infantino caused outrage across the globe last month when it emerged he wanted to create a commercial subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprises, which private investors would be able to buy a minority, non-controlling stakes in, to run his organisation’s major events.
The Swiss-Italian administrator - who had secretly agreed a deal to sell a 20 per cent stake in the new company to Thrive Capital, a firm that is run by the brother of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US president Donald Trump, for $4.2bn – was forced to abandon the scheme after a furious backlash.
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But all 55 UEFA associations are boycotting FIFA-run competitions until they receive assurances the plan will not resurface and the man who replaced the disgraced Sepp Blatter in 2016 following a string of corruption scandals is now under intense pressure to stand down.
Maxwell, speaking at Hampden today as Sebastien Pocognoli was unveiled as the new Scotland manager, confirmed the SFA will vote against Infantino at the next FIFA presidential election in Morocco next March.
“UEFA put out their statement and we said we were fully behind their position,” he said. “That absolutely remains the case.
“We can’t say we’ve lost confidence in someone and then even consider re-electing someone in due course. So we won’t be voting for him the election comes in early 2027. That’s our position. We will see where it goes from here.
“It’s really frustrating that the most successful and best attended World Cup ever has been overshadowed by this. Every Scotland fan who was over there will tell you it was the best time of their lives. That’s now been overshadowed by what’s happened next. That’s not right, that cannot be where we are as a game.
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“We should be talking about the success of the tournament and the joy it brought to so many people, the impact that can have across the game all around the world for a long, long time to come. That’s been overshadowed by FIFA, by Gianni Infantino and everything that’s gone on since then. Therefore, there needs to be change.”
Maxwell continued, “On one hand, a FIFA president or UEFA president coming to the members with an idea for something is their job. But the way that happened was just unacceptable. It can’t leak into the media in the way it did, when it’s that far down the line.
“There cannot have been no discussion with anybody. From what I understand, it’s not even as though FIFA staff really knew that much about it. There’s been a fundamental breakdown in governance, procedure and protocol. And that needs to change.”
