The Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) has declared its support for Gianni Infantino following demands from Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation for the Fifa president to resign, in a development that further highlights world football’s civil war. After a meeting of its executive committee in Fiji on Wednesday, the OFC issued a statement on Friday praising “the progress achieved over the last decade” by Fifa in its first public comments since the abandoned World Cup sell-off plan emerged this month. In another sign of division, however, the OFC’s biggest member and only nation to qualify for this summer’s World Cup, New Zealand, broke ranks with the confederation by withdrawing backing for Infantino and calling for an independent review of the Fifa Forward Enterprise plan, which has been demanded by the three rebel groups.
The OFC is the smallest confederation in world football with just 11 full members, but with Infantino facing a leadership challenge for the first time in a decade at next year’s presidential election those votes could prove crucial. Uefa, Concacaf – the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation – and the AFC provide 143 of Fifa’s 211 members, but powerful countries within those blocks, most notably Mexico and Qatar, have already made it clear that they still support Infantino, while others may also defy the orders of their confederation. The OFC is the last confederation to declare its position and its stance completes the symbolic division of world football, with the Confederation of African Football and South America’s Conmebol also backing Infantino.
In addition the OFC’s stance illustrates the continued backing for Infantino among smaller nations such as American Samoa and the Cook Islands, which is likely to emerge as a theme of the presidential election. New Zealand Football’s decision to break ranks goes some way towards explaining its reticence to commit in a move that has added significance given the federation has benefited from Infantino’s leadership of Fifa, as cohosts of the 2023 Women’s World Cup with Australia.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
