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Football365

4 August 2026

Football365

4 August 2026

It now genuinely appears there is, astonishingly, a non-zero possibility that Gianni Infantino has become so consumed by his own self-importance that his previously unshakeable iron-fist control of FIFA could finally begin to collapse.

It seems that the idea of ‘what if we sold the World Cup to the much-loved Trump family and I pocket a bunch of the cash?’ may actually prove to be the moment when everything starts to fall apart, the point at which the wax melts and the wings that carried him ever closer to the sun finally give way.

It is a spectacular and arrogant blunder from a man who only needed to continue being as crooked and self-serving as before to all but guarantee himself another four years with his snout in the trough. Instead, for the first time, he is facing the possibility of a challenge even from parts of the football world that he had previously kept in line by promising more money and more World Cup places.

But removing Infantino alone would not be enough. Someone would have to take his place. The problem is that identifying who that should be is far from straightforward.

When the idea of naming 10 possible FIFA presidents to replace Infantino was first suggested, the only instruction that came back from above was short and crystal clear: No Wenger.

We are going to ignore that instruction, if only to underline how striking it is. It says plenty about just how far Le Professeur has fallen. Not so long ago, if you were trying to imagine an idealistic and slightly fantastical candidate who would almost certainly never want the role but would be perfect for it, Wenger would probably have been the name you landed on.

A football man. An intelligent man. A serious thinker about the sport. Above all, a decent man. On paper, he would seem ideal.

But then he took an actual job at FIFA and, almost immediately, appeared to lose the plot entirely. In fact, rather alarmingly, that role arguably makes it very slightly less impossible that he could one day end up as president.

It is a sobering reminder of what even the faintest whiff of power can do. He had barely got through the door before The Cleverest Man In Football was pushing utterly wild ideas about having World Cups every two years and trying to force through his indescribably stupid offside plans.

None of us were fond of Infantino’s hydration breaks, but put Wenger in the presidency and he might genuinely break the game altogether.

We are at least fairly confident Wenger is not corrupt, but in some ways that only makes it worse. He would wreck the sport through sheer stubborn refusal to accept that he is so plainly and demonstrably wrong on these issues. At least Infantino had an ulterior motive.

He is the smooth-bollocked hero football deserves, but not the one it needs right now.

You may laugh the idea off if you wish, but any man capable of interrupting his own tribute to Kevin Keegan in order to deliver another attack on Infantino, ensuring that the final words of a video supposedly honouring one of football’s most universally loved figures are “dreadful individual”, is somebody whose voice should be taken very seriously.

Infantino’s artless, starf*cking, open corruption almost makes you nostalgic for the old days of FIFA, does it not? At least back then they understood that corruption was something you were supposed to make a token effort to conceal.

They were gentleman grifters, the finest operators the sport has ever produced. Their like may never be seen again. Let us spare a little applause for Sepp Blatter, who somehow still managed to embody a few fundamentally decent grifting values.

If, as still seems most likely, it becomes obvious that Infantino is going to win the election anyway because when the actual voting begins enough of the smaller confederations reluctantly decide where their bread is buttered and who is holding the biggest butter knife, then the least we can do is make sure the whole affair descends into farce.

Do not allow Infantino to stroll to an unopposed coronation. Make him fight a campaign against a tw*t dressed as a bin, someone whose absurdly impractical joke policies include such outrageous notions as ‘maybe not sell off the game to Donald Trump’s family and mates’.

It would not really change anything, but look around. The world is completely f*cked anyway. We cannot really change anything. Not properly. Not in any meaningful sense. Often, the best we can hope for is to make the bastards a little uncomfortable for a short while.

That is where the irritating faux-intergalactic bin-headed nuisance comes in. There are other names on this list we would not mind seeing in the role. Binface is not among them. But if the choice is between ‘Infantino unopposed’ and ‘Infantino being forced to endure a small ritual humiliation before comfortably defeating a bin’, then the latter is the undeniably sillier but still lesser of two evils. In that tiny way, we all win.

FIFA’s current general secretary is surely too bald, too European and simply too close to Infantino to be seen as the genuine candidate for change needed to persuade the confederations to turn against the incumbent.

That may not be entirely fair on a man who has become a more significant voice within FIFA over the past two years, but optics matter. He looks and sounds far too much like Infantino Lite, which leads naturally to the valid question: what is the point? In that case, you may as well stick with the full-fat, full-bastard version.

Being the less blatant and less exaggerated comic-book villain face of the current regime is not going to be enough. Still, he would probably be preferable to Binface. And, crucially, to Infantino as well.

He is currently available and would, almost uniquely among the possible contenders, enjoy unwavering and enthusiastic backing from a loud and influential section of the British press who already seem convinced he can do absolutely anything.

If a man can guide Newcastle to Carabao Cup glory, then sorting out FIFA’s many problems should be a stroll in the park.

There is also the added bonus of removing him from contention to be the next England manager, although that would come with the drawback of also taking him out of the running to be the next Tottenham manager.

And, incidentally, just imagine the episode of Jake Humphrey’s High Performance Podcast that would come from all of this.

As president of the increasingly influential Asian Football Confederation, he has also become a more clearly audible voice in opposition to the Infantino regime.

The fact that he has brought the 47-nation AFC with him in that opposition is no small achievement, especially given that many AFC members are among those who stand to gain the most from Infantino’s various schemes designed to keep them loyal and supportive, because while he may be lining his own pockets, he is still making sure theirs are not empty either.

Al Khalifa can also point to notable growth and expansion in AFC competitions, both at club and international level, during his time in charge. That may help persuade other confederations that like Infantino’s expansionist instincts but have become uneasy about the sheer naked, contemptuous personal greed driving them, that there may still be a route out in which they can have their cake and eat it too.

It is not going to happen, for all manner of reasons, many of them unpleasant reminders that the absolute best anyone can realistically hope for is a new FIFA regime that is only slightly less evil, slightly less dishonest and slightly less openly self-serving than the boys’ club it has always been and probably always will be.

World football is not about to unite behind a candidate who is, shock horror, a woman. Yet there is also a strong argument that no prominent leader in the modern game has been as consistently right about Infantino for as long as Klaveness.

The president of the Norwegian Football Federation is one of the very few possible challengers whose criticism of Infantino’s outrageous nonsense does not amount to “In light of these new facts of which I now realise I was largely aware, I must take action”, and she was a key voice in UEFA’s scathing collective dismantling of Infantino’s latest wheeze.

Klaveness has not only just begun to question Infantino because of his latest plan to sell the World Cup for profit. She had already spoken publicly against other Infantino nonsense, including the Peace Prize idea and the wider handling of the Qatar World Cup as a whole.

That may not sound like much, but there are not many people in comparable positions who have been speaking out actively for this long. She has also backed even more controversial ideas for FIFA reform, such as greater transparency and the radical notion that the guardians of the world’s most popular sport should be held to basic standards of accountability and perhaps, just perhaps, face consequences for what they do.

It would never work, which is a real shame, because Klaveness, a lawyer and former Norway international, seems to occupy an almost unique place in football governance at present: someone who understands both the game and The Game with real expertise.

There is plenty to like here. First of all, it is undeniably very funny that football has reached a stage where a genuinely strong case can be made that the man best placed to save the sport from itself, and from the money-driven depths to which Gianni Infantino has dragged it, is a bloke from Qatar.

Al-Khelaifi is not only someone who has played a major role in turning PSG into Europe’s pre-eminent football team, but he has also done significant work as chairman of European Football Clubs, formerly the European Clubs’ Association, taking over in extremely difficult circumstances after the entire Super League saga and its collapse within 48 hours.

He has expanded the organisation significantly, with Real Madrid now the only glaring absentee among the major clubs. That is, admittedly, a very glaring absentee, but it also says something about the level of influence Al-Khelaifi now holds within the European club game, where so much of football’s real power resides.

The drawbacks include the fact that he apparently does not want the role. “He genuinely, genuinely doesn’t want the job” was how ‘a source close to Al-Khelaifi’ responded last week when the notion was raised. But we are choosing to interpret that second ‘genuinely’ as placing the dismissal firmly in the category of protesting too much.

The CONCACAF president may be the most plausible unity candidate capable of unsettling Infantino. We do have to be at least a little realistic. There can be silly options that will never happen. There can be fantasy options that will never happen. There can be options that might happen and would probably not be quite as bad, or at least not as cartoonishly blatant in their badness, as Infantino. But there can be no perfect option, because no perfect option exists.

Being FIFA president probably belongs to that category of jobs where anyone who actively wants it, or is in a position to get it, almost automatically becomes someone who should probably not be doing it.

But if we are going to be sensible for one brief moment and try to identify the least bad semi-realistic candidate, then Montagliani is probably the one.

Heaven knows the 2026 World Cup was not perfect, but there is a strong suspicion it would have been much, much worse with a weaker and less politically astute figure leading CONCACAF’s role in the whole sordid affair. He is opposed both to a 64-team World Cup and to Arsene Wenger’s half-baked plan to make FIFA’s golden goose produce a heavily monetised egg every two years rather than every four.

Montagliani occupies that useful middle ground of understanding the world in which he operates while still believing that better outcomes are possible.

“That is the beauty of our game, it is bigger than any individual and country.”

Whether or not he becomes the next FIFA president, all of us can at least hope that he is right about that.