Gianni Infantino is new FIFA president

Zurich: UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino was elected the President of FIFA.

He won 115 out of 207 votes.

The 45-year-old from Switzerland, is a highly effective administrator and key powerbroker in world football. He is fluent in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

Five candidates initially stood in the landmark election for the title, on the final day of the FIFA Extraordinary Congress 2016 at the Hallenstadion in Zurich on Friday.

The other candidates were Bahrain’s Asian Football Confederation (AFC) President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa who got with 88 votes, former FIFA Deputy general secretary and French diplomat Jerome Champagne with 0 votes, and 4 votes for Jordanian Prince Ali bin Hussein.

South African businessman and former MP Tokyo Sexwale had announced his decision to drop out of the election during his candidates’ speech.

Kuwait and Indonesia were barred from taking part.

In the first round of votes, Prince Ali got 27 votes; ‎Shaikh Salman 85; Jérôme Champagne 7; Gianni Infantino 88.

However since none of the candidates got the required two-thirds to win, there was a second round of voting.

If there was still no winner, then a third round would take place and the candidate with the fewest votes in round two would drop out at this point.

Shaikh Salman was one of the two favoured candidates with huge support from the AFC nations and battled it out with Infantino who reportedly made gains in recent weeks. He also had strong support in Europe, South America and the Caribbean and sizeable support from the African block.

The winner replaces the 79-year old five-term Swiss Sepp Blatter as President, who was forced to stand down on June 2 last year amidst claims of widespread corruption allegations.

He had earlier won a fifth consecutive term in late May beating Prince Ali who stood again.

Meanwhile the Bahrain Olympic Committee (BOC) had invited its entire staff to attend the deciding elections to support Shaikh Salman. BOC general secretary Abdulrahman Askar had welcomed all the committee representatives to gather at the Downtown Rotana Hotel in Manama on Friday.