Soccer's world governing body Fifa has taken a first step towards overcoming years of corruption and scandal by overwhelmingly passing a set of reforms intended to make it more transparent, professional and accountable.

The package should help to guarantee that whoever is elected to succeed Sepp Blatter as Fifa president at the Congress being held in Zurich will face closer scrutiny and have less influence over the day-to-day management of the organisation's business affairs.

That election was shaping up to be the two-horse race bookmakers had predicted, as Gianni Infantino, the Swiss general secretary of European soccer body UEFA, narrowly won the first round of voting among the 207 eligible member federations, without securing the required two-thirds of votes.

Infantino took 88 votes to 85 for Asian Football Confederation President Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of Bahrain. Jordanian Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein and French former Fifa official Jerome Champagne got 27 and 7 respectively.

South Africa's Tokyo Sexwale pulled out before voting began.

Balloting was due to continue until a candidate secured an overall majority: 104 votes.

Whoever becomes president will inherit a very different job from that inhabited by Blatter, who toured the world like a head of state for 17 years, dispensing development funds to his global support base.

The associations voted by 179 to 22 to accept a reform package that Francois Carrard, independent chairman of the Reform Committee, said was "necessary to bring a profound culture change to Fifa".

TERM LIMITS

The reforms include term limits for top officials and disclosure of earnings, and a clear separation between an elected Fifa Council responsible for broad strategy and a professional general secretariat, akin to a company's executive board, handling the business side.

"This reform package will provide the foundation for the new president and the new leadership on which to build for the future," Carrard said, adding that the process was "designed to restore the credibility and reputation that Fifa deserves".

That reputation is now so low that Fifa faces a $108 million deficit for 2015 "arising from a lack of credibility", an official said on Thursday - an acknowledgment that sponsors have stayed away while Fifa tries to clean up its act.

Blatter and former European soccer chief Michel Platini have both been banned for ethics violations, caught up in a storm that was unleashed when a clutch of delegates at a Fifa Congress last May were arrested in a dawn raid at the behest of U.S. investigators.

Criminal investigations in the United States and Switzerland have resulted in the indictment of dozens of soccer officials and other entities for corruption, many of them serving or former presidents of national or continental associations.

In addition, Fifa has been forced to investigate controversies surrounding the awarding of its showpiece, the World Cup finals, especially the decision to grant the 2018 tournament to Russia and the 2022 finals to Qatar, a small, scorching desert state with little soccer tradition.

Swiss authorities are reviewing more than 150 reports of suspicious financial activity linked to those awards, and said on Thursday they had sent more documents including an internal Fifa report to U.S. investigators.

SOCCER ESTABLISHMENT

Despite the pressure for change, all the leading candidates are or were senior members of the soccer establishment that failed to prevent Fifa sinking into scandal.

In his address to the forum, Sheikh Salman told the gathering: "I'm not ready to mortgage the future of Fifa for election purposes ... I am one of you, elected in a national association for 15 years and elected in a confederation as a president for the last three years."

Infantino said: "When I speak about figures I know what I am talking about. I've been managing UEFA for the last seven years, during which time the revenues went up by three times."

Prince Ali, who ran against Blatter in 2015, made the most direct reference to Fifa's crisis, vowing "no acceptance of mismanagement, corruption, self-interest, racism, sexism, discrimination of any kind or human rights violations".

Champagne called for greater equality, saying: "Do you want a football that will become like basketball, concentrated in a very limited number of countries or leagues? Or do you want football to continue in a universal way?"

Blatter's ban meant he could not attend the congress, but the 79-year-old said he had had contact with all the candidates except Prince Ali, and that many groups had sought his advice.

The CONCACAF confederation for North and Central America and the Caribbean opted against endorsing a candidate and delegates suggested that support within the region was divided.

With no block vote from those 35 delegates, Africa's decision looked set to be the decisive factor.

African countries make up more than a quarter of the 207 football associations eligible to vote. On the final day of campaigning, there were sharply conflicting versions of how they would cast their ballots.

While the vice-president of their continental federation said virtually all would back Sheikh Salman, several delegates told Reuters the African vote would be split. – Reuters