FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no was re-elect­ed by ac­claim to an­oth­er four-year term on Thurs­day af­ter sug­gest­ing the fi­nan­cial re­sults un­der his lead­er­ship would keep an in­dus­try CEO in the job for life.

In­fan­ti­no had no op­po­nent in the elec­tion and won by ac­claim in­stead of a for­mal vote by the FI­FA Con­gress in Kiagli, Rwan­da. The 211 mem­ber fed­er­a­tions saw their ba­sic an­nu­al fund­ing from FI­FA rise from $250,000 to $2 mil­lion since his first win in 2016.

FI­FA had $4 bil­lion in re­serves af­ter the World Cup in Qatar fin­ished in De­cem­ber. It has con­ser­v­a­tive­ly fore­cast record rev­enue of at least $11 bil­lion through the 2026 World Cup in North Amer­i­ca.

“If a CEO tells the stake­hold­ers that the prod­ucts were mul­ti­plied by sev­en, I be­lieve that they would keep that CEO for­ev­er,” In­fan­ti­no told FI­FA mem­bers. “They would love for this sto­ry to keep on go­ing.

“But I am here for a four-year cy­cle on­ly,” added In­fan­ti­no, whose pres­i­den­cy can even­tu­al­ly run to 15 years through 2031.

The Swiss lawyer was first elect­ed in 2016 with FI­FA in cri­sis af­ter a sweep­ing Unit­ed States fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion of cor­rup­tion re­moved a swath of soc­cer of­fi­cials in the Amer­i­c­as. The fall­out al­so re­moved vet­er­an FI­FA pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter from of­fice with­in months of be­ing re-elect­ed.

Un­der In­fan­ti­no, FI­FA has cre­at­ed new and big­ger com­pe­ti­tions — rais­ing its in­come and giv­ing na­tion­al teams more chances to qual­i­fy for the men’s and women’s World Cups, while fac­ing down re­sis­tance from Eu­ro­pean soc­cer of­fi­cials.

FI­FA’s sup­port for 2022 World Cup host Qatar, where In­fan­ti­no moved to live in 2021, and his close ties to Sau­di Ara­bi­an soc­cer have al­so caused un­ease among rights ac­tivists and some Eu­ro­pean mem­ber fed­er­a­tions. That spilled over at the World Cup in a dis­pute when FI­FA and Qatari or­ga­niz­ers blocked some team cap­tains from wear­ing an an­ti-dis­crim­i­na­tion arm­band.

“To all those that love me, and I know there are so many, and those that hate me, and I know there are a few, I love you all of course, to­day es­pe­cial­ly,” In­fan­ti­no said af­ter be­ing elect­ed.

In an ear­li­er con­gress-open­ing ad­dress, In­fan­ti­no said he took in­spi­ra­tion from Rwan­da’s re­cov­ery from a civ­il war in the 1990s when his own cam­paign to be­come FI­FA pres­i­dent in 2016 was strug­gling.

In­fan­ti­no said he was told on a cam­paign vis­it to Rwan­da he would not be sup­port­ed.

“Of course, I was pret­ty de­pressed, about to give up,” he said, re­call­ing a vis­it he made to the Ki­gali Geno­cide Memo­r­i­al. “What this coun­try has suf­fered and how this coun­try came back up is in­spir­ing for the en­tire world. So, I cer­tain­ly couldn’t give up be­cause some­body is telling me some­thing.”

The pres­i­dent of Rwan­da, Paul Kagame, then made a speech tra­di­tion­al­ly of­fered to the host na­tion’s head of state.

Kagame de­fend­ed Qatar, call­ing its crit­ics “hyp­o­crit­i­cal” and urg­ing for “bad pol­i­tics” to be kept out of sports.

The Nor­we­gian soc­cer fed­er­a­tion put forth a pro­pos­al push­ing FI­FA to com­pen­sate mi­grant work­ers who helped build Qatar’s World Cup projects, but fed­er­a­tion pres­i­dent Lise Klave­ness did not ad­dress the con­gress as ex­pect­ed.

In­stead, the head of an in-house FI­FA pan­el on hu­man rights is­sues, Gibral­tar soc­cer of­fi­cial Michael Lla­mas, said his group would as­sess Qatar’s progress and pub­lish a re­port in full trans­paren­cy.

“There can be lit­tle doubt that FI­FA’s work on these ar­eas has grown in­creas­ing­ly ro­bust over the years and there is al­so lit­tle doubt that we are start­ing to have re­al, tan­gi­ble im­pact,” Lla­mas said in a taped video mes­sage to the con­gress.

Ear­li­er, In­fan­ti­no had re­mind­ed the con­gress of his in­vi­ta­tions to at­tend two edi­tions of the G20 meet­ings of world lead­ers and his close ties to Unit­ed Na­tions agen­cies such as the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion.

“We are a foot­ball or­ga­ni­za­tion. We are not the Red Cross or Green­peace or any oth­er or­ga­ni­za­tions who are do­ing great work,” said In­fan­ti­no, who has tried to in­sert FI­FA in­to world pol­i­tics.

“But we have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as well. We have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to help tack­le glob­al chal­lenges,” he said, iden­ti­fy­ing “cli­mate, hu­man rights, dis­eases, dis­abil­i­ties.”

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Sto­ry by GRA­HAM DUN­BAR | As­so­ci­at­ed Press