Gianni Infantino was expected to appear at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, where the FIFA president planned to lobby world leaders for the backing of their national federations ahead of the March 2027 vote that will decide whether he keeps his job.
The same day, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin used a video address to a football summit in Portugal to remind the sport that the fallout from Infantino’s summer had not passed.
The project “may be abolished, the trust it broke has not returned, and repairing it is our work now,” Ceferin said.
Ceferin did not name Infantino. He did repeat the line UEFA has held to for two months: “Football is not for sale.”
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Courting the 211 votes
Since FIFA abandoned its plan to bring private investors into the World Cup on 31 July, Infantino has been travelling on a Qatar Airways jet provided through the airline’s sponsorship. Reporting compiled by The Guardian and syndicated widely has placed him in Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Kyrgyzstan among other stops, often coinciding with the approval of FIFA development funding worth millions.
To be re-elected, Infantino needs a simple majority of FIFA’s 211 national associations, each of which holds one vote. Confederations can lobby and recommend, but they do not deliver their members’ ballots.
On 21 September, Infantino wrote to all 211 member associations proposing what he called a “direct, structured and time-limited consultation with confederations, Member Associations and relevant stakeholders on how FIFA’s decision-making can be further strengthened”. The first proposals are due at a FIFA Council meeting on 15 October.
UEFA’s Swiss file
The trigger for the crisis was FIFA Forward Enterprise, the commercial vehicle Infantino unveiled on 28 July. The subsidiary would have handed private investors a 20 percent stake in the rights to the men’s, women’s and Club World Cups for around 4.2 billion dollars, implying a total valuation of about 20 billion dollars for the properties. FIFA withdrew the plan within days, after UEFA threatened a boycott and CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation jointly opposed it.
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UEFA has not let the file go. In court filings in Florida, the European body said it was preparing to “bring criminal claims in Switzerland against Infantino and possibly other FIFA officials”. The 20 billion dollar valuation was, UEFA argued, “absurdly low” and “neither the product of an open, competitive auction, nor tested by any independent valuer”, and the process had caused “direct and concrete injury” to FIFA’s reputation, governance authority and commercial standing.
UEFA has also asked US federal courts in New York and Florida for documents to feed the planned Swiss case.
Nominations close on 18 November
The 77th FIFA Congress meets in Rabat, Morocco, in March 2027 to elect the next president. Any candidate must be nominated by at least five member associations, and nominations close on 18 November. Infantino remains the only declared candidate. CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani, a FIFA vice-president, is regarded as the most credible challenger, but has not put his name forward.
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