Top News

In the aftermath of the World Cup, despite the many problems that had dogged the tournament in the United States, Mexico and Canada, Gianni Infantino spoke in a manner that suggested he believed himself untouchable. Having delivered record revenues and what he called the “most outstanding” World Cup ever, the FIFA president seemed confident enough to begin a lap of honour, rebuking his critics from the safety of his FIFA stronghold, secure in the belief that the systems and structures protecting his hold on power remained firmly in place.

Little more than a week later, those protections are visibly falling away. By overreaching and pushing ahead with proposals to sell stakes in the World Cup and other FIFA tournaments to private investors, Infantino appears to have crossed a point of no return. UEFA’s extraordinary move to threaten a World Cup boycott if Infantino succeeds has now been followed by two more confederations, with the Asian Football Confederation and Concacaf also rejecting his plans. UEFA now has enough backing to comfortably defeat Infantino if a vote among FIFA’s 211 member associations takes place next month.

The position of Gianni Infantino is weakening rapidly.

Whether Infantino’s plans, understood by The Independent to have been under preparation for more than a year, even last that long is another question. Pressure is also growing on Infantino from inside FIFA itself. His long-time adviser Carlos Cordeiro, regarded as a heavyweight figure within the organisation, resigned in protest on Friday. “Football has been central to my life, and after more than 35 years in banking, I understand both the value of this asset and the consequences of giving part of it away,” he said in a statement. “That is why this proposal should be rejected.” If even senior FIFA insiders have had enough, it is a sign that Infantino has gone too far.

In its own statement in the early hours of Friday morning, FIFA issued what it called some “clarifications” regarding the private investment proposals, insisting that its “planned consultation process was disrupted by incorrect media reports”. But that may not be enough to prevent some of Infantino’s most loyal allies from turning against him. Asia is due to host the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia, and parts of the region have benefited significantly from Infantino’s support since the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, yet the AFC president, Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa of Bahrain, has emerged as Infantino’s strongest critic outside Europe. In a scathing statement on Friday, the AFC accused FIFA of “undermining” the World Cup and demanded an “urgent review” of its governance.

The AFC said it stood in “solidarity” with UEFA, while Concacaf, the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football, also confirmed that it had “rejected the proposals” after holding its own emergency meeting. The Independent also understands that the overwhelming majority of Concacaf’s 41 members have lost faith in Infantino’s presidency. That deserves recognition, because Infantino’s tactic of offering countries $40m for supporting his proposals, while warning they could receive only $10m if they opposed them, was aimed chiefly at smaller nations that would have benefited greatly from such a windfall, an extra pool of money to clear debts and fund long-overdue infrastructure projects. Infantino sought to exploit those vulnerabilities, but he has instead run into organised and united resistance.

With UEFA, the AFC and Concacaf now aligned, a voting bloc of roughly 150 member associations would be more than enough to defeat Infantino’s proposals, even if a small number of countries from those confederations broke ranks. For Infantino, a humiliating defeat now looks unavoidable. If further resistance comes from the confederations of South America and Africa, which have not yet publicly declared a position, his situation would surely become impossible and could mark the end of his presidency. Even without that, it is already abundantly clear that Infantino must go: a president who puts his own political interests and the financial motives of private investors – including figures from Donald Trump’s own family – ahead of the sport cannot be regarded as a leader. As UEFA said: “This is not merely a profound failure of leadership but an abdication of FIFA’s duty as the custodian of world football.”

Spain are among the UEFA nations that have threatened to boycott the World Cup.

Infantino has close ties with Trump.

Even if his proposals are voted down, Infantino will likely borrow another trait from the Trump playbook: it is hard to imagine Trump resigning over anything, however serious, let alone admitting to a misjudgment on such a massive scale. It says plenty that, in the middle of what looks like a full-blown crisis, Infantino was speeding up his plans to expand the next World Cup to 64 teams while his fiercest opponent, UEFA, was holding its emergency meeting on Thursday.

Infantino is behaving like a tyrant, and he has to be stopped. UEFA and its allies deserve credit for the firmness of their opposition in recent days, but they must now move decisively and put forward a candidate to challenge Infantino when he seeks re-election in March next year. UEFA’s Aleksander Ceferin, who has cast himself as the anti-Infantino despite overseeing anti-competitive changes to the Champions League during his own leadership, would be an obvious contender.

Aleksander Ceferin and Nasser al-Khelaifi are among the possible challengers to Infantino.

The Independent has also reported that Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser al-Khelaifi, who is chairman of Qatar Sports Investment, would attract support as well. He could benefit from a further rise in his standing within the game. Other figures, such as Lise Klaveness, the president of the Football Association of Norway, have also been challenging Infantino for some time. Klaveness in particular deserves recognition for speaking out long before political opinion began to turn against Infantino.

Infantino’s plans for the “FIFA Forward Enterprise” may now look as though they are on life support, but bringing down his wider empire will still require more. Even so, football has now delivered its verdict and there is a window of opportunity that must be taken if the sport wants to create a fairer future: rejecting Infantino’s proposals must also mean rejecting the man himself, and the organisation he has helped to shape.