However, he did apologise for the failed project.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino gave “no satisfactory answers” when questioned on Thursday during a meeting to discuss his attempts to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors, senior members of football’s global governing body said. “We asked a great many critical questions, but there were no satisfactory answers from my point of view,” said Bernd Neuendorf, president of the German Football Association (DFB) and a member of the FIFA Council.Neuendorf was speaking after the Council met behind closed doors at FIFA’s Zurich headquarters, where Infantino’s FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposal was one of the main items on the agenda.
That plan was ultimately abandoned amid widespread criticism, with opposition led by European governing body UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and CONCACAF, which oversees football in North and Central America and the Caribbean. Then there were no holds barred in terms of what we felt about what happened. Infantino has headed FIFA since 2016 and is running for re-election next March, despite calls for him to step down in the wake of the FFE proposal. The proposal would allow for payments of USD 25 million to each of FIFA’s 211 member associations.
“I think we had the opportunity to say what we felt, and we spoke a lot about the issues,” Debbie Hewitt, chair of the English Football Association and a FIFA vice-president, told reporters, before adding that Infantino had apologised. “I think it is fair to say Gianni apologised at the beginning for what had happened, and he said that with some contrition. “We were asked to submit our questions” in relation to the proposal, which was not put before the FIFA Council prior to the July announcement, Hewitt said.
