October 2 – It was another bad day for FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who lost the support of the Swiss federation, the nation of his birth, and was hit by Football Leaks whistleblower Rui Pinto, who described him as “football cancer”.
The withdrawal of Swiss support for Infantino is significant because, as a Swiss citizen, Infantino has led a charmed life, having faced two criminal charges for attempting to interfere in a judicial investigation abandoned by Swiss prosecutors.
The Swiss FA (SFV) confirmed it had withdrawn its support for Gianni Infantino’s re-election, saying: “The decision follows a comprehensive re-evaluation of the developments of recent months. From the perspective of the SFV, several incidents raise fundamental questions about leadership, governance, transparency and decision-making processes at FIFA.
“As they have not been convincingly clarified, we cannot justify continuing to support Gianni Infantino’s candidacy.”
The SFV’s executive committee reversed its decision to back Infantino, despite endorsing his candidacy in June. Infantino was born in Brig, an alpine town in the canton of Valais in southern Switzerland.
Despite being a Swiss citizen who has spent most of his working life at the governing bodies of UEFA and FIFA (he was previously a researcher at the CIES Football Observatory), Infantino has never worked directly on the face of football or with a club, league or national federation, including his own in Switzerland.
A personal story full of “irregularities”
Despite this, he has been at the center of two of the biggest scandals in football history. The current furore over his attempt to sell all FIFA commercial rights to a private equity-backed business is seen by much of the football world as an unforgivable betrayal.
While Manchester City’s financial doping scandal that made them one of the most successful clubs of all time, it was a scandal he allegedly knew about since 2014 and did his best to massage in Man City’s (and PSG’s) favor when they were under UEFA investigation.
Rui Pinto, whose cache of information and documents from Football Leaks triggered UEFA and Premier League investigations into Manchester City, posted on social media that Infantino had “abused his authority” and tried his best to keep the sanctions against Man City and PSG at just fines. He said Infantino “should have no place in the future of the game”.
“In 2014, there was a man who was already aware of Manchester City’s wrongdoings. This man now heads FIFA. The notorious Gianni Infantino, then UEFA General Secretary, abused his authority, shared confidential documents and ultimately outmaneuvered the Investigation Room, doing everything in his power to ensure that both Manchester City and PSG could be fined to avoid a larger investigation. League bench Champions,” Pinto posted.
“Given his actions as UEFA General Secretary and more recently as FIFA President, I can only say, in my humble opinion, that Gianni Infantino has become a cancer in football and should have no place in the future of the game.”
Whether you think of Pinto as a malicious computer hacker or a truth-teller about corruption, you can’t avoid the veracity of the evidence in the Football Leaks documents. A cancer that reaches the top of the world.
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