Infantino apologizes for offering up plan to sell FIFA rights — FT

Infantino apologizes for offering up plan to sell FIFA rights — FT The FIFA President acknowledged that the controversial scheme to attract private investment "should have been handled differently"LONDON, August 6. /TASS/. President of the world’s governing football body, FIFA, Gianni Infantino, has admitted that he made a mistake trying to implement the FIFA Forward Enterprise investment plan worth an estimated $20 billion, the Financial Times reported citing Infantino's letter to the FIFA Council members. In his address written following an emergency FIFA session on Wednesday in Morocco, Infantino acknowledged that the controversial scheme to attract private investment "should have been handled differently." The letter states that FIFA President Infantino and Secretary General Matthias Grafstrom "sincerely apologize" for their mistakes and "commit to them not happening again." FIFA’s chief also pledged to carefully analyze what had happened. FIFA President Gianni Infantino announced a proposal on July 30 to sell a share of the FIFA World Cup commercial rights to private investors under a scheme that could potentially bring it tens of millions of dollars. The plan involves the establishment of a company that will control the major men's and women's FIFA tournaments - the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup. The organization consulted with people close to the administration of US President Donald Trump prior to voicing this decision. The European governing body of football, UEFA, later responded that 55 member-states of the organization voted to boycott all football tournaments sponsored by FIFA. The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) also rejected Infantino’s proposal. In March 2023, Infantino was re-elected for another term of four years as the president of the world’s governing body of football. Infantino, who was 52 at that time, was running unopposed and he was elected unanimously at the 2023 FIFA Congress in the Rwandan capital of Kigali. Infantino was elected the president of the world’s governing body in February 2016 at the FIFA Extraordinary Congress in Paris. In June 2019, he was re-elected for another four-year presidential term. Born in Switzerland, Infantino, 56, is fluent in French, Italian and German and also speaks English, Spanish and Arabic. 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