The latest stories
• Gianni Infantino proposed an outside review of how the governing body makes major decisions;
• The president and vice-president of the German DFB demanded that Infantino resign and called for an end to the "Infantino system";
• FIFA will present a review of the World Cup sell-off plans to the FIFA Council;
The status quo
• On August 10th, AFC, CONCACAF, and UEFA wrote a joint letter condemning Infantino and calling for transformative reform in FIFA: "Leadership in football is not a possession. It is not about holding - or demanding - power to be held. When trust is broken through deception, when an individual places himself above the collective that entrusted him with authority, that duty has been abandoned," the confederations wrote.
• In July, UEFA members voted to boycott all FIFA competitions as long as the FIFA Forward Enterprise remained on the table, but the boycott was provisionally suspended when FIFA abandoned the proposal.
• On September 6th, Gianni Infantino confirmed his re-election bid for 2027. AFC, CONCACAF, and UEFA are working together to replace Infantino and field a candidate to run against the president. No candidate has come forward as of September 18th.
• Potential candidates to run against Gianni Infantino include: Victor Montagliani (CONCACAF President), Dariusz Mioduski (Legia Warsaw owner), Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa (AFC President), and Mattias Grafstrom (FIFA Secretary General).
• The Dutch FA (KNVB) is intent on hosting a global summit on FIFA reform, with all 211 member associations invited and Infantino not welcome.
• The following confederations and football associations have officially withdrawn their support of Gianni Infantino: UEFA (Europe), AFC (Asia), CONCACAF (North and Central America), England, Scotland, Wales, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Germany, Republic of Ireland, France, Finland, Serbia, Sweden, Croatia, Albania, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Northern Ireland, Jordan, Sierra Leone, Canada, United States, Guyana.
• The following confederations and football associations have come out in support of Gianni Infantino: CAF (Africa), CONMEBOL (South America), Argentina, Mexico, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Paraguay, Qatar, Morocco, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Lebanon, Indonesia, Philippines, Mongolia, Bhutan, Egypt, Mauritania, Niger, Sudan, DR Congo, Nigeria, Comoros, Malawi, Uganda, The Gambia, Djibouti, South Africa.
The key dates
November 18th, 2026: All candidates for the FIFA presidency must have come forward by 23.59 CEST in order to stand against Gianni Infantino in the upcoming FIFA presidential election.
March 18th, 2027: The FIFA presidential elections will take place at the 77th FIFA Congress in Rabat, Morocco.
The backstory
Gianni Infantino took over as FIFA president in 2016 after the disgraced Sepp Blatter resigned. Blatter left his post after a large-scale corruption investigation that saw 18 people indicted, including nine FIFA officials.
From his opening days, Infantino aimed to make FIFA presentable again, bringing in some of the best players ever to accompany him as so-called 'FIFA Legends', global ambassadors of the game. Infantino presented a 90-day plan to eradicate corruption and restore FIFA's tarnished reputation, said it was "now or never" to change FIFA governance, and refused to criticise Blatter.
Questions soon arose over Infantino's priorities, with the Swiss executive being investigated several times. Shortly after his election, FIFA's ethics committee investigated Infantino for accepting two private jet flights. One year later, he was investigated and questioned about possibly facilitating the sudden exits of two chairmen and all but two ethics committee members. Swiss prosecutors charged Infantino with making a "political" decision, alleging that he did not have an independent body looking into corruption allegations aimed at FIFA.
The Swiss special prosecutor investigated Infantino again in 2020, claiming the FIFA president had undisclosed, undocumented meetings with Swiss Attorney General Michael Lauber. Lauber left his post in 2020 after a court ruled he had covered up the meetings, while critics claimed Infantino operated with the same lack of accountability as the previous FIFA regime.
In 2024, Infantino granted Saudi Arabia the hosting rights to the 2034 FIFA World Cup, congratulating them a year in advance, even though the selection had yet to go to a vote. Infantino limited the process to bids from Asia and Oceania, while FIFA's sponsorship deal with Saudi's state-owned oil company Aramco, worth $100 million annually, fueled the controversy.
The scandals
No countries withdrew their support for Infantino after the previously mentioned controversies, but inventing the FIFA Peace Prize and awarding it to US President Donald Trump during the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw further called into question Infantino's ethics.
Pressure on Infantino's presidency reached a boiling point during the 2026 FIFA World Cup. USA striker Folarin Balogun, the country's top scorer with 3 goals, was shown a red card during the knockout game against Bosnia and Herzegovina, costing him the round-of-16 match against Belgium in Seattle. However, after a phone call from Donald Trump, FIFA suspended the red card, allowing Balogun to still feature against Belgium.
National FAs criticised the decision, as well as FIFA's rejection of Belgium's query, for which the Belgian FA had only a few hours to act, with FIFA providing no information.
After the FIFA World Cup, the footballing world turned on FIFA and Gianni Infantino in numbers when the world football governing body proposed to sell stakes in the World Cup. Infantino had envisaged raising up to $4.2 billion through a commercial subsidiary called 'FIFA Forward Enterprise', valued at $20 billion, to run the men’s and women’s World Cups and the Club World Cup.
The stakes would be sold to individual investors, which included Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
In a letter to all 211 FIFA member associations, Infantino promised to give the members that approved the plans a one-time incentive of $40 million, while promising to increase funding allocations for the 2027-2030 cycle from $8 million to $20 million.
The plan, which even Sepp Blatter criticised, sparked widespread outrage in the footballing world. European football governing body UEFA called it a "shabby, back room, opaque deal", while its 55 members unanimously voted to boycott any future FIFA tournaments as long as the proposal was on the table. Asian governing body, AFC, called the proposal "totally unacceptable", while CONCACAF, the North and Central American confederation, said it was "deeply concerned" by the lack of good governance.
Even senior FIFA officials lashed out at Infantino, with FIFA COO Kevin Lamour, who was later fired, saying FIFA staff were deceived by Infantino and that the "time has come for football political leaders to ask themselves the right questions and make the right decisions", FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafstrom lamenting the "sad and reproachable series of events" and celebrating the end of the 'FFE' proposal, and FIFA senior advisor Carlos Cordeiro stepping down after calling the proposal "a bad deal for FIFA's Member Associations, a bad deal for football, and a bad deal for the long-term future of the game."
Infantino and FIFA scrapped the sell-off plans on August 1st, stating that "the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place" and that FIFA's purpose "has always been - and will always be - to unite and improve."
According to reports, Infantino sent pre-written letters of support to all 211 FIFA members, with many not signing and some associations publicly withdrawing their support for the FIFA president. UEFA members came out in unison to declare a loss of confidence in Infantino the same day as the plans were revoked.
The Dutch KNVB declared a "fundamental breach of trust", while the French FFF said that "the trust placed in the FIFA president has been betrayed" and Germany's DFB spoke of an "irreparable loss of confidence."
AFC called for "comprehensive reckoning" for Infantino, and UEFA threatened to take legal action against FIFA, calling for Infantino and the governing body to "take immediate steps to identify, locate, and preserve all documents and electronically stored information described in this notice that are in your or FIFA’s possession, custody, or control."