LONDON, August 18. /TASS/. The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) is upset with the Qatar Football Association (QFA) for supporting FIFA President Gianni Infantino, The Times reported on Tuesday.

Reuters reported earlier that the football federations of Morocco, Qatar, and four other Arab countries expressed their support for Infantino.

"At a time when continental solidarity is of paramount importance, your current stance and actions, which call into question the legitimate authority of the AFC president, only undermine the unity of Asian football, weakening our collective ability to defend the interests of the Asian football family on the global arena," AFC President Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa said in a letter to the QFA.

Infantino announced a proposal on July 30 to sell a share of the FIFA World Cup commercial rights to private investors under a scheme that could potentially bring it tens of millions of dollars. The plan involved establishing a company that would control the major men's and women's FIFA tournaments - the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Club World Cup. The organization consulted with people close to the administration of US President Donald Trump prior to voicing this decision.

The European governing body of football, UEFA, later responded that 55 member-states of the organization voted to boycott all football tournaments sponsored by FIFA. The Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) also rejected Infantino’s proposal.

In March 2023, Infantino was re-elected for another term of four years as the president of the world’s governing body of football. Infantino, who was 52 at that time, ran unopposed as he was elected unanimously at the 2023 FIFA Congress in the Rwandan capital of Kigali.

Infantino was elected the president of the world’s governing body in February 2016 at the FIFA Extraordinary Congress in Paris. In June 2019, he was re-elected for another four-year presidential term.

Born in Switzerland, Infantino, 56, is fluent in French, Italian and German and also speaks English, Spanish and Arabic.