Canada PM Carney says he has no confidence in Fifa's Infantino

TORONTO – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he has no confidence in Fifa president Gianni Infantino, following the fallout from the football chief's now-shelved plan to open the World Cup up to private investment.

"Certainly I don't have confidence in Mr Infantino, after this point, given what transpired," Carney told reporters when asked about Fifa's chief and the abandoned proposal.

Infantino has come under increasing pressure, even from within his own organisation, over his handling of the plan, and calls for him to step down have grown since he abandoned it last Saturday.

Carney said Infantino's reported failure to discuss the plan with Fifa's senior management team "should be fatal" to his tenure leading world football's governing body.

"This is not how you run any business, a small business, let alone something that is a global responsibility like football," Carney told reporters in Toronto.

Infantino held emergency talks earlier on Wednesday with Fifa directors in Morocco, the 2030 World Cup host, in a bid to contain the crisis.

The Fifa president had been basking in the afterglow of a highly successful World Cup, described as the largest ever with 48 teams and co-hosted by three countries: Canada, Mexico and the United States.

But his tenure is now facing an unprecedented threat amid a wave of global fury over the scrapped plan, which called for the creation of a new commercial subsidiary, called the Fifa Forward Enterprise, to run events such as the World Cup.