Gianni Infantino faces grilling at potentially ‘explosive’ Fifa council meeting

Fifa president Gianni Infantino faces questioning over World Cup sell-off, Folarin Balogun affair and Fifa peace prize at potentially explosive council meeting.

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Fifa president Gianni Infantino will be questioned by Fifa council members over his involvement in the aborted World Cup sell-off plan, the Folarin Balogun affair and the decision to award Donald Trump the inaugural Fifa peace prize at what is expected to be a heated meeting at the world governing body’s headquarters on Thursday.

The Fifa president rejected repeated calls for an extraordinary general meeting of council during the summer after the emergence of the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) proposals, but will meet his critics for the first time since in Zurich with one attender predicting that the talks could be “explosive”.

Aleksander Ceferin, Victor Montagliani and Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, the presidents of Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation respectively, all of whom have all called for Infantino to resign, will be in attendance to press home demands for an independent review of Fifa’s governance.

In response to letters from Ceferin, Montagliani and Salman sent last month Infantino pledged to commission an external review of Fifa’s future governance, but no details have been forthcoming and there remains scepticism over whether it will be truly independent.