Rui Pinto has again placed FIFA President Gianni Infantino under intense scrutiny, reviving accusations tied to the long-running Manchester City case and accusing him of shielding the club from harsher punishment.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese hacker, whose leaked material helped trigger the Premier League investigation into Manchester City, described Infantino as \u201ca cancer on football.\u201d In a social media post, Pinto argued that Infantino was already aware of the issues around the club in 2014, when he was UEFA General Secretary.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in 2014, there was a man who was already aware of the irregularities involving Manchester City,\u201d the activist wrote on social media . \u201cThat man now runs FIFA.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe infamous Gianni Infantino, then UEFA General Secretary, abused his authority, shared confidential documents and, in short, outmaneuvered the Investigatory Chamber, doing everything in his power to ensure that both Manchester City and PSG would merely receive a fine, avoiding a deeper investigation that could have led to a Champions League ban. All of these details were also revealed through Football Leaks.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven his actions as UEFA General Secretary and, more recently, as FIFA President, I can only say, in my humble opinion, that Gianni Infantino has become a cancer on football and should have no place in the future of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The comments revisit UEFA\u2019s 2014 examination of Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, when both clubs avoided competition bans and were instead fined. Pinto and Der Spiegel later claimed that Infantino \u201ccircumvented\u201d normal procedure and helped steer the matter toward that outcome.<\/p>\n
Among the documents cited in the report was an email allegedly sent by Infantino to Khaldoon Al Mubarak in May 2014. It included the line: \u201cSorry for my \u2018late-Friday-night email,\u2019\u201d along with the phrase, \u201cYou know you can trust me. … Let\u2019s be positive!\u201d<\/p>\n
Der Spiegel also reported that UEFA\u2019s Investigatory Chamber found City had accumulated a deficit of at least \u20ac188 million during a period when only \u20ac45 million could be lost. The same report said Infantino had held \u201csecret talks, even supplying them with confidential materials\u201d and made \u201ccompromises that he was unauthorized to propose.\u201d<\/p>\n
City\u2019s dissatisfaction was also highlighted through a hacked email allegedly written by Simon Cliff, in which Al Mubarak was quoted as saying: \u201cKhaldoon said he would rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue them for the next 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Infantino has not responded publicly while touring Asian soccer associations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pinto has renewed his attack on Infantino, linking the FIFA president to City and PSG sanctions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238],"tags":[1047,182],"class_list":["post-21174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","tag-champions-league","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}