Gianni Infantino to Lead FIFA Into New Era

Gianni Infantino had just won the FIFA presidency on Friday, but seemed to be still sorting out how to row the boat of leadership.

Mr. Infantino’s ascent to perhaps the most powerful position in sports was hardly foreseeable several months ago. As soccer’s beleaguered governing body reeled from one crisis - that of widespread corruption allegations and arrests among its leadership - it seemed to be headed for another. Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, a member of Bahrain’s royal family, was considered the favorite to become the next FIFA president in Friday’s election but faced questions about possible connections to the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in his country.

Instead, Mr. Infantino, a Swiss administrator, will try to lead global soccer out of its darkest period after FIFA’s voting members, in an upset, chose him to follow the suspended Sepp Blatter, once a Swiss administrator himself. Mr. Infantino, 45, becomes just the ninth president in FIFA’s 111-year history, a reality that is emblematic of its long-embedded resistance to change.

 “A new era has been started as we speak,” said Mr. Infantino, the secretary general of UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, since 2009. “You will be proud of FIFA. You will be proud of what FIFA will do for football.”

The balloting that led to Mr. Infantino’s victory may have quietly yielded another winner. In the aftermath of the election, while Mr. Infantino was greeting well-wishers, numerous officials from other national federations stopped at the opposite end of the dais. That was where Sunil Gulati, the president of U.S. Soccer and a member of FIFA’s executive committee, was sitting.

Mr. Gulati and the rest of the U.S. Soccer delegation had worked the floor of delegates between the first and second ballots, trying to swing votes to Mr. Infantino, who gained a startling 27 votes from one ballot to the next. Afterward, many officials pointed to U.S. Soccer’s role in the result — an important development because the full congress votes on World Cup hosts, and U.S. Soccer is likely to submit a bid during Mr. Infantino’s tenure to host the 2026 World Cup.