Gianni Infantino said Wednesday he had turned FIFA into an organisation "synonymous with credibility" as he was re-elected for a second term as president of world football's governing body. It was a formality that the 49 year-old would be waved through for a new four-year mandate, until 2023, as he stood unopposed at the FIFA Congress in Paris. The FIFA Council chose to back his re-election by acclamation, with Infantino now hoping to build on the work he started in February 2016, when he was voted in to succeed the disgraced Sepp Blatter at the head of the organisation.

Eager to "open up" and "globalise" the game, he will now push ahead with already approved plans to expand the Club World Cup to 24 teams, and with his ambition of expanding the World Cup itself to 48 teams. As he addressed the 211 members of the Congress in the French capital, where the Women's World Cup begins on Friday, Infantino claimed credit for the success of the 2018 men's World Cup in Russia, the "transparent" bidding process for the 2026 tournament in North America, and the introduction of Video Assistant Referees into the game. He said he was now at the head of "a new FIFA, an organisation that is synonymous with credibility, confidence, integrity." "Today nobody talks about crises, nobody talks about rebuilding FIFA from scratch, nobody talks about scandals, nobody talks about corruption. We talk about football," insisted the Swiss-Italian lawyer, formerly secretary general of European governing body UEFA. "The very least we can say is that we have turned the situation around.