English FA vice-chairman backs Infantino in FIFA presidential race

Football Association vice-chairman David Gill says Gianni Infantino is his personal choice to run FIFA.

Infantino - secretary general of UEFA - is one of five men standing to replace Sepp Blatter as FIFA's president at next month's election.

Infantino received the full backing of the UEFA executive committee on which Gill sits, and the former Manchester United chief executive believes the Swiss is the right man for the job.

Speaking on Radio Five's Sportsweek programme, Gill said: "I read all of this information, the (Football Association) board will discuss it in detail, I know four of the candidates, I don't know Mr (Tokyo) Sexwale personally, but knowing the others, for me - and this is a personal view - Gianni Infantino is the stand-out candidate.

"Why do I say that? He's very experienced, has run a confederation. He's used to looking after political and governance matters, he's used to looking after large and small countries and clubs, he's used to looking after competitions, national teams and clubs, you translate that to running FIFA... I believe he has the personality, language skills, the appetite and the knowledge to do that and that's my personal view.

"(FA chairman) Greg Dyke is looking to meet them all and that will be a big discussion at our board. I stress that's a personal view but, having met them all he is, in my opinion, what FIFA needs at the moment."

Infantino and Sexwale are joined in the running by Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, Jerome Champagne and Prince Ali bin al-Hussein.

With FIFA hoping to emerge from the crisis which has engulfed it over the last year, some voices have called for the organization to be closed down and reincarnated.

Gill, though, feels FIFA is worthy of remaining.

"It's the overall governing body, in charge of developing sport throughout the world, it runs an very important competition, the biggest football competition in the world, it produces a lot of money which is then used to develop the game around the world," he added.

"It runs other aspects of the game be it the transfer system, player status... It's quite right there is an overall governing body."

On closing it down, he said: "I don't think it's either necessary or easy to achieve; FIFA is a solvent organization, it had a large level of resource within its banks and in terms of the administration side is doing a good job.

"We start again, what does that achieve? If we liquidate and renew it, we have to transfer contracts, look after the staff. FIFA has demonstrated in the last week or so that appropriate work is still going on. For example, the transfer bans of the Madrid clubs demonstrates that FIFA does take things seriously and I can't see much merit in starting again.

"I think it can and should be reformed; within FIFA there are a lot of good people doing work."