Three and a half hours. One locked room in Zurich. And a president who walks out without facing a single reporter. On Thursday, Gianni Infantino met the Fifa Council for the first time since his secret Fifa Forward Enterprise plan leaked, and he began by saying sorry.

The proposal, scrapped within days of emerging, would have handed a slice of Fifa's commercial rights to a private investment firm. Hours after the meeting, Fifa released a video in which Infantino admitted mistakes in how the project was communicated and discussed. He insisted, though, that it had only ever been a proposal, never a done deal, and that its aim was to let Fifa invest more in its member associations rather than replace existing support. He declined to take questions from the media, including the BBC, promising written answers "in due course".

For one of his own vice-presidents, that is not nearly enough. Debbie Hewitt, chair of England's Football Association, called the session the most robust and frank she had experienced. Yet she left without the FFE papers she has repeatedly requested. Council members also pressed Infantino on the Fifa Peace Prize, on funding for national associations, and on the suspended red-card ban handed to US striker Folarin Balogun.