Gianni Infantino bungled one political move in Canada while also making it clear Europe is on the fringes of his thinking
Gianni Infantino’s final words of the 76th Fifa congress were the least surprising of an otherwise intriguing week.
“I wanted you to be the first to know,” the Fifa president said with a straight face of his decision to seek re-election next year, which has been an open secret since before his previous victory in 2023, as Fifa’s statutes were altered to permit such an outcome a few months earlier. (Having introduced a three-term limit after Infantino replaced Sepp Blatter in 2016, Fifa’s governance, audit and compliance committee ruled in December 2022 that his first 39 months in office did not count, as he was completing his disgraced predecessor’s term).
In reality Infantino’s re-election will be a coronation, as he has already received the public endorsement of the African, Asian and South American confederations, meaning 111 of 211 potential votes are already in the bag. As with the 2019 and 2023 presidential contests, therefore, Infantino will be elected unopposed, and there was not even the merest suggestion in Vancouver of anyone taking what would be a futile stand against him. Beyond the congress hall however, there were plenty of other significant developments as football’s rulers met for the last time before next month’s World Cup.
