Prince Ali accuses FIFA and Gianni Infantino of ‘blackmailing’ Jordan

Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, president of the Jordan Football Association, has accused FIFA and its president Gianni Infantino of attempting to pressure Jordan into supporting Infantino, describing the situation as “blackmail”.

In a strongly worded statement, Prince Ali said Jordan had faced major financial and administrative difficulties during its first appearance at the World Cup, while claiming FIFA had failed to provide assistance over a number of issues.

“There is no shortage of issues being raised about FIFA,” he said.

“Allow me to begin by clarifying some of these matters from the perspective of a national association, specifically the Jordan Football Association, which participated in the World Cup for the first time.

“We are a small country, and our association has a limited budget. We have been forced to deal with enormous obstacles.”

Prince Ali said the first difficulty involved the entry of Jordanian supporters into the United States.

“Not all of our fans were granted visas, despite having tickets for the matches,” he said. “We also know that those tickets were sold at extremely high prices.”

He then criticised the tax arrangements connected to Jordan’s participation.

“The United States government is imposing taxes on us through FIFA for our participation,” Prince Ali said. “This is money that should have gone to the players and members of the staff.

“That did not apply to the teams that played and held their training camps in Canada and Mexico. However, we happened to be in the United States and are now facing huge tax costs because of our participation.”

The Jordanian federation president also said his association was still waiting for prize money owed to its players from the FIFA Arab Cup in Qatar.

“We have been waiting since December for the financial rewards owed to our players for the Arab Cup in Qatar, a tournament organised by FIFA,” he said.

“To this day, we have not received the money due to our team after it reached the final, while FIFA boasts that it has reserves worth billions of dollars.”

Prince Ali said the problems pointed to what he regarded as a failure of leadership at FIFA.

“It is clear that the real problem concerns the leadership,” he said.

“For months, FIFA refused to help us with any of these issues or others, until someone verbally told me during the World Cup that my support for Infantino would contribute greatly to helping our association.”

Prince Ali said Jordan would not change its position as a result of that pressure.

“In Jordan, we are proud of our commitment to ethical values,” he said. “We did not support him before, and we certainly will not support him now.

“But everything that is happening amounts to blackmail, and we refuse to give in to it.”

Jordan made its World Cup debut in the tournament and were eliminated in the group stage after defeats by Algeria, Austria and Argentina.