French Football Federation withdraws support for Infantino's FIFA election bid

Federation headquarters for us here in Paris. What more can you tell us, Claire? Well, I've just come out of a press conference run by Philippe Diallo, the head of the FFF, the French Football Federation, and he made it very clear that the executive committee this morning agreed unanimously that they were withdrawing support for Giano Infantino and his bid to continue as the head of FIFA, to be re-elected in those elections to take place in Rabat in March in Morocco. Now, the key reason behind this, and we heard this clearly from Philippe Diallo, that he said before the World Cup he and other footballing nations pledged support to Gianni Infantino, but it was after the World Cup, particularly that commercial project that was announced at the end of July, Gianni Infantino wanting to sell a stake of future World Cup profits to private investors, and that really was something that caused an absolute uproar, an outcry here in France, in Europe, particularly with UEFA, so Europe's governing the governing body of football, and we saw federations in the Americas and the North Americas as well as Asia coming up and saying this was a case of desires to sell the soul of football and make rich people richer, and that was something Philippe Diallo said that even though that project was abandoned, within days Gianni Infantino said that he was abandoning the project, that wasn't enough and the trust had been broken. He also said, Philippe Diallo, that events during and after, other events during and after, without going into great detail, during and after the World Cup just meant that the FFF could no longer support Gianni Infantino. This was not a big surprise, something we had been expecting, Philippe Diallo also saying that France had legitimacy when it came to having its voice heard on this matter, historic legitimacy as a founding member of FIFA, but also sporting legitimacy as having had clearly so much success and good performance in World Cup tournaments in the last few decades. Claire Pacquiao, thank you very much.