Pinnick: Only Africa’s finest will fly continent’s flag at FIFA Council

In the past four years, Melvin AmajuPinnick has been a member of the FIFA Council, which is the highest decision making body of world football. The position entails making several sacrifices, including globetrotting and meeting with people with different ideologies and contributing ideas that would shape the sport globally.

Coming into the FIFA Council just after the past decade of scandals and disaffection among football stakeholders, the 37-member body, to its credit, has been able to stabilise the polity and ensure that the world football governing body is in a good financial state. But Pinnick said that FIFA’s current position is just the beginning of a journey that would make it the biggest sports brand on earth.

Fielding questions, at the weekend, on his tenure in the FIFA Council so far, Pinnick said the “journey has been wonderful because the vision of our leader, Gianni Infantino, was very clear from the beginning: integrity, financial success and impacting hugely on the member associations and I think those three things were accomplished beyond anybody’s imagination,” pointing at “the organisationof tournaments and making tournaments a veritable platform to attract respect, attract sponsors and to redeem the image of FIFA, especially after the incidents of about 10 years ago.”

Looking at the body’s current state, Pinnick said that FIFA is in a wonderful position in terms of its finances and organisation of tournaments, explaining, “you can imagine the tournament in Qatar three years ago, the Women’s World Cup in Australia/New Zealand as well as the various youth championships.”

On the continental football body, CAF, Pinnick said African football has grown in leaps because of the quality of leadership given by