Five months before FIFA’s 211 member associations vote in Rabat, a European federation has stopped making speeches and started filing paperwork.

On Tuesday the Norwegian Football Federation lodged two separate complaints inside FIFA’s own disciplinary and oversight machinery. One went to the Ethics Committee, asking it to examine whether Gianni Infantino’s conduct breached FIFA’s Code of Ethics. The second went to the Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee, asking it to probe whether FIFA’s “governance system, financial oversight, internal controls and decision-making processes have operated as intended”, according to Al Jazeera.

That split is the point. One track pursues the president personally. The other goes after the plumbing.

Three cases, one through-line

The complaints bundle three incidents from the past ten months. In December 2025, FIFA presented Donald Trump with a “FIFA Peace Prize”, a trophy critics said FIFA invented without a transparent process and that cut against the organization’s commitment to political neutrality.

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In July 2026, during the United States’ last-32 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, forward Folarin Balogun was sent off and automatically given a one-match ban. Within days the suspension was itself suspended, with FIFA citing Article 27 of its disciplinary code. Trump had phoned Infantino, and he took public credit for Balogun’s reinstatement while FIFA insisted an independent committee had made the call. UEFA said the decision had “crossed a red line”.

Three weeks later, on 29 July 2026, FIFA unveiled FIFA Forward Enterprise, a commercial subsidiary that would have sold minority stakes in the organization’s commercial rights to private investors, with Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital tipped as lead investor through a vehicle called Thrive Eternal. By Friday evening on 31 July the plan was dead, with Infantino saying the project had “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”.

Norwegian federation president Lise Klaveness, who called for Infantino’s resignation in August, said the three cases share one connection.

“There is a line between all these three cases, and it’s the same political regime,” she said.

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Her framing for the committees was blunter.

“Is it an abuse of power, an abuse of position? Is it a breach of political neutrality?”

What the two tracks can actually do

FIFA’s Ethics Committee is empowered to investigate individual officials and can recommend sanctions up to and including bans from football. The Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee is a different animal: it reviews financial decisions, internal controls and whether FIFA’s own governance rules were followed. By splitting the filing, Klaveness has forced two parallel reviews that cannot easily be waved away as political noise from a single critic.

Neither committee has publicly indicated whether it will open a formal investigation. FIFA has not said whether Infantino is under review.

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Rabat is five months away

Infantino, 56, has declared he will seek a fourth term at the FIFA Congress in Rabat on 18 March 2027. Candidates must declare by 18 November, and the winner needs an outright majority of the 211 member associations.

UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin has ruled himself out of a run, telling reporters his credibility stays “much, much higher if I’m not interested in the position”, according to Heavy. CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani is viewed as the strongest potential challenger, and UEFA, CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation have all been publicly critical of Infantino over the Forward Enterprise plan. Those confederations do not control how their members vote, however: each of FIFA’s 211 associations casts its own ballot in Rabat.

Norway’s complaints will land on committee desks before that nomination deadline closes on 18 November.

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