Gianni Infantino calls emergency Fifa meeting as pressure mounts

Gianni Infantino has called an emergency meeting of Fifa staff in Rabat on Wednesday following comments by Arsene Wenger that ramped up the pressure on the president, the Press Association understands.

Former Arsenal manager Wenger, Fifa’s chief of global football development, issued a statement saying he was “not involved” in the plan to seek private investment in a company to run the World Cup but that the decision to withdraw it was “absolutely necessary and beyond question”.

PA understands the meeting in Morocco was called after the weekend and is also to include secretary general Mattias Grafstrom and the Fifa management board, which includes the organisation’s chief of staff Daniel O’Toole, chief legal officer Emilio Garcia Silvero, chief of member associations Elkhan Mammadov, HR chief Kimberly Morris, media director Bryan Swanson and communications director David Farrelly.

Grafstrom, the second most senior figure in the organisation after Infantino, is also understood to have contacted Fifa staff addressing the “sad and reproachable series of events” of the last week “which thankfully concluded with the project being permanently abandoned”.

The plan to create FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), a company to run the commercial and operational aspects of Fifa’s tournaments, first emerged in reports by The Times and the Financial Times last Tuesday, before Fifa issued confirmation of some of the details. The most controversial aspect was the idea to sell 20 per cent of FFE to private investors.

The plan was firmly rejected by European football’s governing body Uefa, as well as CONCACAF – representing nations from North and Central America plus the Caribbean – and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Uefa also