Gianni Infantino was told to stay away. He went anyway.

The FIFA president was in Punta Cana over the weekend for a Caribbean Football Union under-14 tournament, days after Victor Montagliani, the CONCACAF president and one of Infantino’s own FIFA vice presidents, wrote to him asking him to reconsider. On Saturday Infantino posted photos on Instagram showing meetings with Dominican political and football officials on the sidelines of the youth games.

Montagliani had been blunt in the letter.

“I believe that considering the governance crisis surrounding FIFA as a result of your controversial FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, the media will focus on this situation,” he wrote.

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He asked Infantino “in the name of football to reconsider your attendance as it will unfortunately undermine the technical nature of this important youth development activity.”

The photos Montagliani did not want

Infantino has not taken a public question since British newspaper The Times revealed his FIFA Forward Enterprise plan on 28 July, a project to sell stakes in future World Cup commercial revenue to private investors. He withdrew the proposal on 1 August after a backlash that turned three of his own FIFA vice presidents against him.

Since then, his most visible platform has been his Instagram feed. Punta Cana added a new set of images: the FIFA president smiling next to local politicians and Caribbean football officials at a tournament for 14-year-olds. The setting is small. The signal is not.

The Caribbean Football Union sits inside CONCACAF, the confederation whose president had just tried to keep him out of the country. By turning up and posting the pictures himself, Infantino was making the point that Caribbean federations do not have to follow Montagliani’s line.

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Sky News reporter gets the brush-off

The one moment Infantino did face a camera came on Friday, when Sky News reporter James Matthews asked whether he had betrayed the sport and should resign. “Thank you so much,” Infantino replied, before joking about the two men both being bald and moving on.

That was the extent of his public engagement with the crisis. No statement, no defense of the FFE plan, no comment on Montagliani’s letter. Just the photos.

Confederations do not deliver votes

The politics behind the trip is a numbers game. UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF are all weighing a no-confidence motion to remove Infantino before his term ends. To force the issue onto the agenda of an extraordinary FIFA Congress scheduled for 23 November, 43 of FIFA’s 211 member associations would need to sign by 23 September, and unseating him would then require a simple majority of the votes cast.

Confederations do not control how their members vote. Each of the 211 national associations casts its own ballot, and the African confederation CAF has already said publicly that Infantino still has Africa’s support. The Caribbean, a cluster of small federations inside CONCACAF, is another place where his opponents cannot assume the votes will follow the leadership line.

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Punta Cana was a working weekend in that arithmetic.

18 November, then 18 March

18 November is the deadline for candidates who want to challenge Infantino at the 77th FIFA Congress on 18 March 2027 in Rabat, Morocco. No challenger has publicly declared. If the no-confidence route fails, or never reaches the floor, Infantino goes to Rabat as the incumbent.

He is behaving like a man who thinks he will.

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