KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTING —- Gianni Infantino will be re-elected unopposed as president of world football federation FIFA next year but the powerful German federation will not be voting for him.

Infantino has been spending half of his time based at FIFA headquarters in Zurich and half of his time in Qatar where the most controversial finals of the modern era kick off on Sunday.

The DFB has turned notably away from FIFA since Bernd Neuendorf took over as president earlier this year and broke with tradition by refusing to seek the ‘usual’ German place in the most powerful committees of both the world and European federations.

The straw which broke the German camel’s back appears to have been Infantino’s reticence to tackle head-on the controversial issues surrounding Qatari preparations and regulations.

Neuendorf complained, in a statement, that he would have liked FIFA to “have made a clearer commitment to human rights and a greater commitment to humanitarian issues.”

He reiterated the DFB’s demands “for the establishment of a compensation fund for the relatives of the workers who died or were injured on the World Cup construction sites.”

The DFB advocates the establishment of a migrant working center in Qatar.

FIFA’s presidential election will be held at congress in Kigali, Rwanda, in March. Infantino has been confirmed as the only candidate and will thus stand for a second full four-year term. His re-election was never a double given his guaranteed overwhelming support from South America and Africa.

Back in Switzerland Infantino has been entangled for several years by prosecutors investigations into meeting with senior law officials over the circumstances surrounding his original successful bid to land the FIFA presidency in 2016 in succession to disgraced and banned Sepp Blatter.

FIFA statement:

Following the call for election issued by the FIFA Council on 30 March 2022, FIFA’s member associations have proposed, in due time and form, the following candidate for the presidential election due to take place at the 73rd FIFA Congress in Kigali, Rwanda, on 16 March 2023: – Mr Gianni Infantino (incumbent FIFA President) No other candidature has been submitted.

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