Among the statements of support for the FIFA president Gianni Infantino, there is competition to be the most craven. In a congested field, the Argentinian Football Association, who are very keen on an expansion to a 64-team World Cup in 2030, may have just nosed ahead.
“We address you, dear President,” they wrote in a public statement issued on Thursday, “and through you to the FIFA board, to express our support for the management carried out during the last 10 years, which had as its main axes the development of football throughout the world and the institutional solidity based on a clear, stable and transparent governance model.”
These pledges have now come from Africa, Asia and both Central and South America and are similar enough in tone and structure to have come from a template. They have all addressed Infantino with the same reverence, loudly applauded him for abandoning his private equity scheme, that would have seen a portion of FIFA’s business sold to external investors, and then praised him for a style of leadership — clear, stable, transparent — that he stands accused of not showing.
Infantino is being praised for having to abandon a plan that was conceived in the dark, but then exposed against his will by the media. It might be one of the only times in recent history that someone has drawn a standing ovation for being forced into an embarrassing U-turn.
Strange?
No, this is football, where cognitive dissonance is a survival skill. These are less gestures of support, more sacred oaths at the feet of a monarch.
The lack of dissent is startling. Over the past 10 days, Infantino’s unilateral behaviour has led international football and FIFA to a point of crisis. And yet there is no room at all, in any of these statements, for even the gentlest of warnings about his future conduct. None of this support is conditional, nor is there an implementation of any safeguards that might prevent overreach from ever occurring again.
On Wednesday, at an emergency meeting in Morocco, Infantino and members of FIFA’s management board — with some notable absentees — disappeared into a smoke-filled room to decide that, actually, everything was fine. There were some mild communication issues, the resulting statement said, euphemistically, and perhaps some minor processes that could do with work, but nothing to cause any alarm.
“It was agreed,” read the press release, “that it was not the intention for the FIFA Council and FIFA Member Associations to feel excluded from the process.”
That extraordinary line was in reference to the FIFA Forward Enterprise plot, which never saw any formal committee and was hidden from the FIFA Council for more than a year. If members did feel excluded, they had cause.
But, again, no public dissent. No censure at all from these supportive nations and no real concern shown.
This week began with another controversy that almost escaped notice. Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan, the president of his country’s football association and a former FIFA presidential candidate, complained on social media that prize money owed for the national team reaching the final of the 2025 Arab Cup had still not been paid, eight months later.
(Francois Nel/Getty Images)
Prince Ali also claimed that he had been advised that were the Jordanian FA to profess its support for Infantino ahead of next year’s election, then that could help expedite the payment. The situation was tantamount to “blackmail”, he said, and if his account of events is accurate then it would be difficult to disagree.
FIFA did not respond to The Athletic’s request for comment.
A few days later, FIFA remembered that it had a bill to pay and quietly made the necessary arrangements. Prince Ali thanked the federation for the funds, adding that his association is small and depends upon them, but added that “it does not change the serious concerns we in the football world have regarding the FIFA leadership, nor does it change what our FAs have been subjected to in the past.”
How does an incident of such severity not trouble those now falling in line?
The answer, of course, is because it does not pay to have concerns. To be in opposition to a FIFA president is to deny your country or federation the office’s favour. That is why global football increasing resembles a fearful royal court, in which subjects are either trying to fill their pockets with gold or avoid being sent to the gallows.
That cannot continue. There is no cure for self-interest in football and there can never be any expectation for national or continental bodies to think beyond their own borders. That is why the office of the FIFA presidency itself must change and be reformed in a way that prevents its occupier, whomever that may be, from having this bestowing role.
Football is too big now. It is too rich, too globally consequential and can be used in too many ways. To place all that power in the hands of a single person, elected but not properly constrained, is to strengthen the mechanisms of control that prevent the position from ever facing proper scrutiny.
The current situation precisely characterises that danger. Do the countries that have been so quick to move past the events of the past week genuinely believe in Gianni Infantino’s leadership, or does he now wield such executive power that they have to?
In the last year alone, he has altered the structure of the game itself, breaking over a century’s tradition to incorporate hydration/advertising breaks. He has allowed political interference in a World Cup disciplinary process and led a clandestine push for the infusion of private equity. His office has been used to award peace prizes and sponsor political incursions that challenge FIFA’s own neutrality statutes.
(Jia Haocheng – Pool/Getty Images)
And yet: “Dear leader, carry on.”
Football will continue to grow. With it, so will the power of the FIFA presidency, leaving the game increasingly at the mercy of an individual’s ego, ambition and ideology.
Is there a reform candidate? It is the wrong question to answer now, but how can anyone know the answer.
Infantino is a timely reminder that the president elected is not the president who serves. A little over a decade ago, he was the person who organised the Champions League draws. No charisma, no hint of any megalomaniacal ambition. He was credibly seen and accepted as the antidote to Sepp Blatter. Yet 10 years on, he seems to exist independently of FIFA rather than as an extension of it, doing with the game whatever he believes is right.
Why would that not happen again?
The solution is not to usher a new person into this role, place a crown on their head and hope that their benevolence and better judgment perseveres. Whether the move now is towards a rotating presidency shared between the confederations every four years, stricter term limits, a more ceremonial role or something entirely different, there must be a lesson learned. International football must not only heed the warnings of the past week but also recognise the direction of travel.
There can be no more kings.
