Gianni Infantino was re-elected FIFA president unopposed at the congress of world football’s governing body in Paris on Wednesday as he claimed to have turned the organisation from being “toxic and almost criminal” back to its core values.

Infantino’s re-election was marked by a round of applause from the congress after the statutes were changed earlier in the day to no longer require a vote if there was only one candidate for the position.

The 49-year-old Swiss-Italian lawyer now has a four year mandate to try and accomplish his grandiose plans for football which were partly frustrated in his first term.

He has been in charge of FIFA since February 2016, after succeeding Sepp Blatter in the wake of a damaging corruption scandal that Infantino claimed the body had now shaken off.

“Nobody talks about crisis at FIFA any more or rebuilding it from scratch. Nobody talks about scandals or corruption, we talk about football. We can say that we’ve turned the situation around,” he told the congress in a lengthy speech at Paris Expo.

“This organisation has gone from being toxic, almost criminal, to being what it should be — an organisation that develops football and is now synonymous with transparency, integrity.”