Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, the president of the Jordanian Football Association (JFA), has accused world football's governing body FIFA of attempting to "blackmail" his organisation into backing Gianni Infantino's bid for reelection as FIFA boss.

The former FIFA presidential candidate levelled the accusation in a scathing post on his X feed on Tuesday, claiming his organisation had asked FIFA for assistance with three separate issues this year but was told he needed to endorse Infantino first.

The first of these issues, according to Prince Ali, related to the difficulties Jordan — who qualified for their first ever World Cup this summer — had in securing visas for their fans, even those who had bought tickets "at exorbitant prices".

The second request concerned American taxes that Jordan's players and staff are liable for following their stay in the U.S., which the JFA had not budgeted for and would not have faced if they had been based in co-hosts Canada or Mexico. Finally, Prince Ali claims Jordan are still owed prize money from December's FIFA Arab Cup in Qatar, where they went unbeaten to the final before losing 3-2 to Morocco.

"It is clear the problem really is with (the) leadership," continued Prince Ali, who ran unsuccessfully against Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency in 2015 and then against Infantino and Bahrain's Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al-Khalifa in 2016.

"For months, FIFA has been refusing to help us on any of these or other matters until it was verbally communicated to me, during the World Cup, that if I endorsed Infantino it would go a long way to helping our FA out."

"We pride ourselves in Jordan in upholding ethical values. We did not endorse him before and certainly will not now. But the whole situation amounts to blackmail and we refuse to give in to that," he added.

FIFA has not responded to a request for comment.

Who is Prince Ali and why is his intervention significant?

The third son of Jordan's former king and half-brother of the current ruler, Prince Ali carries significant weight in Asian football, where he is also the founder and president of the West Asian Football Federation, which currently counts 12 FIFA nations among its members. He served as a FIFA vice-president between 2011 and 2016 before being ousted by Sheikh Salman — but not before championing the lifting of FIFA's ban on the hijab in women's football and creating a development programme to raise money for better football facilities in the Middle East.

A clash at the worst possible time for Infantino

Prince Ali is a formidable opponent, then, at a difficult moment for Infantino, who is still fighting for his survival as FIFA boss after the collapse of his plan to create a subsidiary that would own the commercial rights to FIFA's competitions and sell a 20 per cent stake in the new business to private investors.

That project united the Asian, European and North and Central American confederations in opposition to Infantino last week. UEFA said it had lost confidence in his leadership; the Asian Football Confederation and Concacaf, although not going as far as Europe in calling for change at the top, are both seeking urgent answers as to why the plan was developed in secret, who appointed the various banks and funds involved, and why FIFA needed to sell a stake to anyone given it is sitting on estimated reserves of $7 billion.

Infantino is yet to respond to these questions but did withdraw his "FIFA Forward Enterprise" project in a public statement on Saturday. Since then, various UEFA member associations have publicly withdrawn their support for a fourth four-year term as FIFA president next year, while senior FIFA executives — including his number two Mattias Grafstrom and chief of global football development Arsene Wenger — have also issued statements saying they had been deceived by Infantino and knew nothing about the FFE project.