South Sudan will back Gianni Infantino’s bid to be Fifa president, according to a sports official.

On Friday, the Confederation of African Football, CAF, voted to back the other leading contender, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain.

However, the 54 African federations will vote separately in the election to decide Sepp Blatter’s successor in Zurich on 26 February.

“We are supporting Gianni Infantino for the Fifa presidency,” South Sudan football chief Chabur Goc Alei told the BBC.

Mr Goc said Infantino, the preferred candidate of Fifa vice-president and former Manchester United chief executive David Gill, had a better project ‘for our federation, for Africa and the world’.

He said he expects more African nations to support Infantino, general secretary of Uefa, who became the confederations’ candidate when president Michel Platini was prevented from taking part over the payment scandal that saw him banned from football for eight years.