CAPE TOWN: Leading African football administrators have sent messages of support to embattled FIFA President Gianni Infantino as he looks to the continents 54 members for backing in a bid to keep his job.
Five of the continents influential football leaders have issued statements that offer Infantino support while also welcoming the decision to drop his controversial plan to sell a stake in future World Cup revenue.
Their messages came ahead of a meeting of the Confederation of African Footballs executive committee on Thursday at which they will discuss the abandoned plan to raise $4.2 billion from a new commercial rights body.
While Asia, Europe and CONCACAF all said over the weekend they had lost confidence in Infantino’s leadership, CAF has kept its counsel, offering Infantino hope he can count on the support of its large membership as he looks to hold on to power at next March’s FIFA presidential election.
CAF only released a statement last Wednesday saying it would study Infantino’s FIFA Forward Enterprise initiative, but he abandoned the project under intense pressure on Friday.
It remains an item on the agenda for the CAF meeting, although there is no guarantee African football’s governing body will take any stand on Infantino’s future.
But leading committee members say they are backing Infantino, including CAF vice-president Fouzi Lekjaa from Morocco and fellow FIFA Council members Hany Abo Rida (Egypt), Hamidou Djibrilla (Niger) and Ahmed Yhaya (Mauritania).
There has also been a statement of support from Veron Mosengo-Omba, recently elected president of the football federation in the Democratic Republic of Congo and former CAF general secretary, who studied at university in Switzerland with Infantino.
All released similarly worded messages welcoming Infantino’s decision to abandon the project before praising him and expressing support.
African countries helped Infantino to his election success in 2016 on the back of his promises to more than double development money dispensed to FIFA’s member associations.
It is this largesse that has helped keep him popular among African members, many of whom struggle financially and now largely depend on FIFA money to compete.
“Our problem is how to obtain money. Right now, we have no sponsors. So how do we compete? The richest nations can train players, have infrastructure and equipment, and it’s no coincidence that they then achieve results. Most European countries don’t have these problems,” said Sad Ali Athouman, the president of the Comoros Football Federation.
“Our government is not able to make sure that they have medical supplies in hospitals and at the same time to look at football. Malawi needs money. Malawi needs stadiums,” added Fleetwood Haiya, president of the Football Association of Malawi.
FIFA baseline funding guarantees each of its 211 member associations $8 million over a four-year cycle, plus CAF also now offers an annual grant to its members.
Gifting grants to member associations was first floated by Infantino’s predecessor, Sepp Blatter, when he stood for election against Lennart Johansson in 1998, and he won with backing from most African countries, who had never before received financial help from world football’s governing body, even though CAF formally endorsed the Swede, who was then UEFA president.
Infantino continued Blatter’s idea, although he renamed it from the Goal Project to FIFA Forward, and exponentially increased the monies.
“ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY”
While Infantino got the backing of African nations, pressure kept mounting on his as former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, appointed in 2019 by Infantino as FIFA’s chief of global football development, said in a statement that “the decision to withdraw the project was absolutely necessary and beyond question”.
His remarks followed hot on the heels of an extraordinary internal email to FIFA staff, seen by AFP, in which secretary-general Mattias Grafstrom appeared to distance himself from Infantino on the issue.
Previously seen as close to Infantino, Grafstrom describes the fiasco surrounding the plan as “a sad and reproachable series of events”.
He adds: “Individuals, unstable moments and unfortunate episodes come and go. The institution, its mission and its responsibility towards world football continue.”
UEFA issued a letter through their lawyers in the US threatening legal action over what they had scathingly described as a “shabby, backroom, opaque deal”.
Both Grafstrom and Wenger as well as chief operating officer Kevin Lamour, who had slammed the plan on Friday, are mentioned in the letter as being knowledgeable about the FFE and instructed to keep all “relevant materials”.
The damning remarks by both Wenger and Grafstrom — who shadowed Infantino throughout the World Cup — will twist the knife further.
Despite what UEFA’s lawyer wrote regarding keeping material pertinent to FFE, Wenger claims to have only learned about it through the media.
“I was not involved in this strategic plan,” the 76-year-old Frenchman said.
Grafstrom, for his part, tried to cheer up the staff by congratulating them on their work while admitting it had been “an extraordinary and challenging week”.
Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2026