Infantino is new FIFA President

Swiss-Italian Gianni Infantino has been appointed President of FIFA today in Zurich. The UEFA General Secretary defeated his closest challenger Sheikh Salman 115-88. He will be charged with cleaning up the world football governing body and repairing the organization's badly damaged image.  

The new President was a late entrant into the race and only entered the race when Michel Platini was suspended and subsequently banned for six years for accepting a “disloyal payment” from Blatter in 2011. 

Tokyo Sexwale had pulled out of the race before the commencement of voting. Infantino took a narrow 88-85 lead in the first round of voting, with the Jordanian Prince Ali bin al-Hussein in third place with 27 votes and the French former Fifa executive Jérôme Champagne in fourth with seven. 

Infantino in his victory speech said: “I want to be the president of all of you. I travelled through the globe and I will continue to do this. I want to work with all of you to restore and rebuild a new era where we can put football in the centre of the stage. 

“Fifa has gone through sad times, moments of crisis. But those times are over. We need to implement the reforms, we need to have good governance and transparency. But we also need to have respect. We will regain this respect by hard work and dedication, so we can again concentrate on the wonderful game of football.”