FIFA president Gianni Infantino arrived on Friday in the Colombian city of Cali to attend hard-right president Abelardo de la Espriella’s inauguration, as a crisis sweeps the highest echelons of the football world.
Infantino is at the center of a storm that has struck FIFA following a much-criticised — and ultimately abandoned — plan to allow private investment in the World Cup.
“It is a joy to be here today,” the FIFA boss told dozens of children kitted out in football gear at an event in the southwestern city.
“Football is joy, football is happiness, football is unity,” he said, adding that “so many champions” were born “in this part of the world, in this part of Colombia.”
Infantino, who will seek a fourth and final term in the presidential election in Rabat in March next year, is facing criticism, notably from European body UEFA, which on Thursday maintained its threat to boycott the World Cup despite FIFA’s withdrawal of the private investment proposal.
He declined to answer a question from an AFP journalist in Cali about whether he considered FIFA’s woes to be over.
Close to figures on the right of politics, such as US President Donald Trump, Infantino will attend De la Espriella’s presidential inauguration ceremony later on Friday.
Colombia’s incoming leader has broken with tradition by choosing to hold the ceremony in Cali, considered the capital of salsa, rather than before Congress in Bogota.
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