New FIFA chief Infantino wants to see football develop in India

“And people looking at FIFA as the organisation who helps each country in the world to develop football and who helps kids to smile because they have a ball and they can play with it”, Infantino was quoted as saying by goal.com on Saturday.

Infantino will complete the rest of Blatter’s presidential term, serving through May 2019.

The tactical shifts Blatter predicted helped Infantino pad his margin to a decisive 115-88 lead in the second round.

Candidate Tokyo Sexwale of South Africa chose to drop out before the ballot kick off.

Infantino has held the position of general secretary at UEFA, the European games’ governing body, since October 2009 after initially joining as a lawyer in 2000.

“We will restore the image of Fifa and the respect of Fifa and everyone in the world will applaud us”, Infantino told Friday’s Fifa Congress after his election.

ZURICH (AP) – A sign of the Federation Internationale de Football Association president’s newly-diminished powers and status will come when Gianni Infantino’s salary is revealed.

“We enter now into a new era, it was today an important congress, an extraordinary congress, where some reforms have been approved, some groundbreaking reforms”. But we also need to have respect, the respect that the entire world owes to football.

Prince Ali bin al-Hussein (four votes) and Jerome Champagne (0) were third and fourth respectively.

Referring to suggestions many African countries voted for rival candidate Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain, Infantino said: “It was a competition not a war, it was an election… you win, you lose”.

Sheikh Salman, the head of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), lost out to Uefa secretary-general Infantino in Friday’s vote to succeed the banned Sepp Blatter.

– Born in Brig, Switzerland, the new president’s hometown is only 6 miles from Blatter’s hometown of Visp.

“But I don’t think he’s a politician, whereas we’ve just has a politician for many years”. Sheikh Salman has been alleged of human rights violations and also vote buying in the past.

In the first round of voting, Infantino received 88 votes, Salman 85, Ali 27 and Champagne seven.

The result is uncertain but football leaders were given an immediate warning that the vote and new reforms must convince the world after several years of mounting scandal with corruption and doubts about World Cup bidding.