The governing body of football, FIFA has been under heavy scrutiny and the main reason of this was due to the scandals and proof of corruption that was discovered.
The decision to award Russia with the chance of being the hosts for the approaching 2018 World Cup is one that has been criticized by the media and there were allegations that cash as well as gifts was awarded to executive members of FIFA in order to secure the bid despite what the voting results could have resulted with.
This ended up with a number of FIFA officials being banned while others were arrested.
In spite of all these controversies that has been going on surrounding the upcoming World Cup, the Russian Sports Minister, Vitaly Mutko said that the approaching tournament is what the sport and the governing body FIFA needs in order to help restore what has been lost in recent times.
“Infantino’s election will make it possible for us to normalize the situation in FIFA and around world football. We’ve got a great deal of serious work in this direction ahead of us,it won’t all be Plain Sailing, and Russia is assigned a colossal role in this process. In fact, the 2018 FIFA World Cup will be the new president’s first major project, the gem in the crown of world football. It may be that this will be a unifying tournament. The odds are that the process of reforming FIFA and restoring full confidence in this organization will be completed by 2018. And this may happen here in Russia,” Mutko said.
Vitaly Mutko believes that Russia will play a huge role in helping out FIFA restore their confidence and image which was destroyed after all the scandals, corruption and bribery reports was discovered and things got so serious that the former president of FIFA, Sepp Blatter had to step down and resign after a number of his colleagues were either arrested or banned al together from anything involving football.
After Sepp Blatter stepped down from his presidential role in FIFA, Gianni Infantino was laterselected as the new president of the football governing authority.