Norway's soccer president Lise Klaveness called FIFA's removal of the senior official who criticized Gianni Infantino's World Cup sell-off plan 'management by fear'. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing Associated Press.
The firing of FIFA chief operating officer Kevin Lamour came 17 days after his statement to the Associated Press criticizing Infantino's $20 billion private equity project.
"Now he is thrown out and we are supposed to move on. It's unacceptable, it's management by fear," Klaveness told the AP in a telephone interview, describing Lamour as "the best football administrator I have ever met."
"Now we also have to call upon FIFA leadership and the administration to not submit to orders you know are not in the interests of football," Klaveness added, especially targeting FIFA secretary general Mattias Grafström.
Klaveness is a former Norway international player, a judge in Oslo and an elected executive committee member at UEFA. She has built on her country's long-held reputation as a champion of good governance in soccer.
Lamour was a long-time colleague of Infantino, first as senior officials at UEFA from 2007-15, on his campaign team to be elected FIFA president in 2016, then moving two years ago from UEFA to oversee much of FIFA's operations in Zurich.
With a reputation among the most trusted executives in the often murky world of global soccer politics, Lamour's pointed criticisms of Infantino's leadership intensified a crisis for the FIFA president.
A backlash by UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and north American soccer body CONCACAF was provoked by a secretive plan to sell future World Cup profits to investors led by Joshua Kushner.