Infantino rejects calls to resign as FIFA dispute continues

FIFA president Gianni Infantino rejected calls for him to resign, saying football’s member associations should decide who leads the organization, as scrutiny continues over a scrapped proposal to sell commercial rights to private investors. In an interview, Infantino laughed when asked whether he had considered stepping down. He said he had been elected by 211 member associations and argued that differing views should be respected alongside the position of what he described as the vast majority. Infantino said the Asian Football Confederation had fully endorsed him and that all African countries backed him. Those were his characterizations of the support he had received; the extent of backing among individual associations was not independently established in the accounts of his remarks. The dispute centers in part on FIFA Forward Enterprise, or FFE, a proposal under which some commercial rights, including rights connected to the World Cup, would have been sold to a private investment firm. Infantino scrapped the proposal within days. He later apologized to the FIFA Council over the organization’s communication and consultation on the plan. UEFA has demanded that FIFA release...