England’s letter to FIFA is not simply a withdrawal of backing for the March 2027 vote. According to British and international reporting, the FA has told FIFA that Infantino should not be running the sport at all, not next term, but now.
That framing separates England from associations that have said only that they will not vote for him again, and lines it up alongside Wales as one of the sharpest voices inside UEFA’s boycott bloc.
FIFA’s own Management Board tried to close the story down on Wednesday, August 5, meeting in Rabat and reaffirming “their full support for FIFA President Gianni Infantino, as the only official elected by the 211 FIFA Member Associations”. The board addressed the handling of the failed FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, a plan to sell a roughly 20 percent stake in a new entity overseeing the World Cup and other competitions, and pledged that the exclusion of the FIFA Council from decision-making would not recur.
How you actually remove a FIFA president
The distinction between opposing a candidate and opposing an incumbent matters because of how FIFA is built. There is no scheduled review of the presidency between congresses. Under the statutes, a written request from one-fifth of the membership, 43 of the 211 associations, can trigger an Extraordinary Congress, at which a majority would then be needed to remove him. England, on its own, cannot force that.
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By describing Infantino’s presidency in absolute terms, though, the FA raises the bar on anything that would look like a truce. “He should not be there” is very hard to walk back if the plan is put back in a drawer and the board simply keeps him in post.
UEFA’s 55 are still out
England’s letter is not an outlier in Europe. UEFA’s 55 member associations voted unanimously in late July to withdraw from all FIFA competitions, and the confederation confirmed the following week that the meeting in Rabat had not changed that.
“UEFA made it abundantly clear in its statement on Saturday that it has lost confidence in Gianni Infantino’s presidency. That position holds,” UEFA said in a statement after the Rabat meeting.
Two conditions were laid out: the commercial-rights sale had to be permanently withdrawn, and there had to be assurances that no similar plan would return. UEFA’s public position is that neither test has been passed.
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Wales moved first among the individual national bodies, on August 3, when the Football Association of Wales confirmed its withdrawal with a statement citing “recent failures in good governance, processes, leadership, values, stakeholder management, communications and sound judgement” that had led Infantino to lose the confidence of the FAW.
The clock to November 18
The countdown that concentrates minds is not the FIFA Council. It is the calendar. Candidates for the presidency must file by 18 November 2026, exactly four months before the 77th FIFA Congress votes in Rabat on 18 March 2027. Each of FIFA’s 211 member associations casts one ballot, and a candidate needs two-thirds of valid votes cast in the first round; if no one clears that bar, subsequent rounds are decided by a simple majority.
Infantino is currently the only declared candidate. Concacaf president and FIFA vice-president Victor Montagliani is reported to be weighing a run and has become the name most often floated as a consensus alternative. He has not formally declared.
Even a UEFA bloc that has voted as one on the boycott would not by itself remove Infantino at the ballot. FIFA’s 211 associations each vote separately, and confederations can lobby but cannot deliver their members’ ballots.
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FIFA calls it a ‘concerted’ campaign
FIFA is treating the campaign against Infantino as coordinated and improper. In a statement on 9 August, it referred to a “concerted and ongoing effort” to undermine the president and warned that “those who do not have the support of FIFA’s Member Associations should not seek to achieve through allegation, insinuation or misinformation what they cannot achieve through FIFA’s established democratic processes”.
The English FA’s letter cuts against that framing. Its message is not that Infantino should be beaten in March. It is that the association’s president should not be in the office when March comes.
The next fixed date is 18 November. If Montagliani, or anyone else, files by then, the “only official elected by the 211” line the board used in Rabat stops being a defence and becomes a contest.
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