Gianni Infantino Must Step Down Now
There is no polite way to dress this up. Gianni Infantino has to go.
Not in six months. Not after another round of “dialogue” and carefully managed charm offensives. Now. Either he steps down as Fifa president or football’s authorities find the mechanism to force him out. Every extra day he clings to power deepens the stain on a governing body whose credibility is already hanging by a thread.
His climbdown on Saturday morning laid bare just how far he had overreached. Having driven ahead with the Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) project – a scheme to parcel off chunks of the World Cup to private investors – Infantino abruptly accepted defeat. The plan was dead. He emerged with a new line about resuming talks on football’s growth “in the spirit of shared interest in our game”.
It sounded less like a statesman recalibrating and more like a man trying to save his own skin.
Because this was not a one-off misjudgment. It was the latest entry on a charge sheet that stretches across continents and confederations, and which has finally snapped patience in the corridors of power. Fifa’s slogan insists that “football unites the world”. Under Infantino, it has rarely looked more hollow.
A presidency at war with its own rulebook
Fifa’s own regulations could not be clearer. Article 10.3, the clause that sets out the president’s responsibilities, demands that the incumbent ensures Fifa’s “objectives, mission, strategic direction, policies and values are sustainably pursued, protected and implemented, and that a positive image of Fifa is fostered”. It also talks about “promoting friendly and peaceful relations within Fifa”.
Look around. Federations are openly distancing themselves from the president. Senior figures are briefing against him. Uefa has gone to war. The idea of “friendly and peaceful relations” feels like a bad joke.
Nothing in those rules offers licence for a president to chase a string of private projects, many of them pushed in concert with the current US administration or its orbit, and tabled with minimal oversight or explanation. Yet that is exactly what has unfolded on Infantino’s watch.
The FFE scheme, with its vision of handing huge influence over football’s future to venture capital, might have been enough on its own to topple most leaders. For Infantino it was simply the latest act.
A trail of anger and disbelief
Where to start? The Folarin Balogun affair pushed many leading figures, particularly in Europe, to the brink. Before that, there was widespread bafflement and disgust when Infantino presented a new Fifa peace prize to Donald Trump in December. The process behind the award remained murky. The information offered about Trump’s supposed qualifying achievements was hotly contested.
Stakeholders were already uneasy. They then found themselves sidelined again when Fifa introduced “hydration breaks” at this summer’s World Cup. Far from a minor tweak, the change cut into the rhythm and fabric of matches without proper consultation.
Then came the 2034 World Cup bidding saga. A bizarre, accelerated process ended with Saudi Arabia’s candidacy effectively waved through in December 2024. Critics lined up across the game. Yet the machine rolled on.
All of that arrived before Friday’s revelation that plans for a 64-team World Cup are now in full swing. One controversy bled into the next. Each one chipped away at trust. Each one tightened the focus on the man at the top.
So when Uefa issued a searing statement on Saturday, condemning “secret schemes on fast track timescales, cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game”, it was about far more than FFE. It was a verdict on an entire style of rule.
Uefa draws a line
The pressure finally told. Uefa, long furious but until now limited to angry communiqués, moved from words to action. It pledged to boycott future Fifa tournaments if Infantino refused to abandon his plan to sell off parts of the World Cup. The threat was public, united and impossible to ignore.
That stance shaped the outcome. Infantino folded. Aleksander Ceferin, Uefa’s president, emerged with what may prove the defining achievement of his own tenure.
But that victory will ring hollow if Infantino is allowed to regroup. He has already hired a major consultancy to repair relations with federations in recent days, a clear sign that he intends to fight on, to dangle new promises, to coax wavering associations back towards the status quo.
Inside Uefa and beyond, there is a hardening belief that this moment cannot be wasted. The pace must not slacken. Senior figures are adamant: Infantino cannot be allowed to survive this scandal.
The next move: letters and leverage
One crucial step lies with the national associations. The overwhelming majority had already pledged formal support for Infantino’s re‑election next March. Those letters now sit like time bombs.
Insiders argue that associations should recall them. Doing so would require a formal request to Fifa, but if enough came at once it would amount to a de facto vote of no confidence. Fifa had lobbied aggressively for those declarations of loyalty. Many FAs would be deeply embarrassed if their pledges were dragged into the public eye now.
Yet embarrassment is a small price to pay. Member associations carry a duty to protect their sport from existential threats. Shrinking from that responsibility would mean failing the game as profoundly as Infantino has. Walking away now, with the job half done, would be an abdication.
Uefa has already signalled that it is willing to rethink how Fifa’s wealth is distributed. The plan is to tap into the organisation’s multibillion cash reserves without “selling the family silver” to outside investors. Behind closed doors, it is also working with other confederations to identify credible candidates to replace Infantino, ready to stand in next year’s election if he somehow clings on until then.
The crisis, handled correctly, could become a turning point. A chance to reshape global football governance, to rebuild trust, to prove that the game is not simply a vehicle for one man’s grandiose ventures.
But that can only happen if Infantino is removed from the equation.
The alternative is brutally clear. Fifa, and with it the sport it claims to serve, continues to lurch from one manufactured disaster to the next, trapped in a cycle where the world’s conversation about football keeps coming back to a single figure, his ego and his schemes. How long can the game tolerate that before it recognises the damage as permanent?
