On Friday 26 February, 2016, the member associations of Fifa, World Football's governing body, elected Gianni Infantino (right), a European football administrator born just six miles from Sepp Blatter, as its new president in a bid to restore the world governing body’s reputational damage overseen by his disgraced predecessor. Photo: Provided

However, the Swiss-Italian Uefa general secretary, who entered the race only when his boss Michel Platini was suspended then banned for six years for accepting a “disloyal payment” from Blatter in 2011, faces an uphill task to overhaul Fifa’s battered reputation.

Infantino, who spent €500,000 of Uefa funds touring the globe in the run-up to the election, triumphed over the controversial Asian Football Confederation president, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, in the second round of voting by 115 votes to 88.

The Bahraini had assumed his presidential bid would end in a coronation when he resolved to stand following Platini’s withdrawal in October, but his campaign has been marred by strenuously denied allegations over human rights breaches and vote-buying in previous elections.

After Infantino took a narrow 88-85 lead in the first round of voting, with the Jordanian Prince Ali bin al-Hussein in third place on 27 and the French former Fifa executive Jérôme Champagne in fourth with seven, he seized the initiative. Infantino’s energetic campaign, together with promises to more than double development money dispensed to Fifa’s 207 federations to $5m over four years, won the day.