Infantino's Re-election Bid Splits Football's Great and Small
Gianni Infantino's bid for a final term as Fifa president is fracturing the global game along familiar fault lines — and a few unfamiliar ones.
The confederations of Africa, South America and Oceania have all backed the Swiss administrator for re-election, which is scheduled for March and requires 106 votes from Fifa's 211 member associations to win BBC Sport. But the ground beneath those endorsements is already cracking.
New Zealand broke ranks with its own Oceania confederation, announcing it will not vote for Infantino BBC Sport. Mexico, Grenada and St Kitts and Nevis peeled away from the other 32 nations of Concacaf — the confederation covering North and Central America and the Caribbean — to champion him independently. In Asia, eight of the 46 member associations split to support Infantino: the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, Kuwait, Mongolia, the Philippines and Bhutan BBC Sport.
The Fifa Council — the 36 confederation and national association chiefs who sit alongside Infantino at the top table — appears similarly divided.
The opposition is concentrated in Europe. The Football Association, the Scottish FA and the Football Association of Wales have all withdrawn their support, as have Serbia and Finland Herald Scotland. The Scottish FA went further, stating it has "lost confidence" in Infantino and will not back him for a third term BBC Sport. Mike Mulraney, the Scottish FA president, also chairs Fifa's finance committee — a post that gives his dissent an institutional weight most national voices lack BBC Sport.
England and Scotland have asked Fifa to postpone the election, citing an alleged bribery scandal BBC Sport. The request echoes a similar intervention from 2011, when both associations pushed for a delay during the last major governance crisis at the governing body.
That these tensions are spilling into public view with a major tournament on the horizon only sharpens the moment. The Fifa Under-20 Women's World Cup, hosted by Poland and featuring England among five other European nations, kicks off just over three weeks after the current wave of splits became public BBC Sport. It will be the first test of whether Uefa's hardening stance against Infantino carries consequences for the pitch.
For fans, what happens in Fifa's corridors can feel distant from what they watch on a Saturday. But the president of the world's governing body sets policy on everything from the calendar to the format of the World Cup itself — the one tournament that brings the whole sport together. When the vote comes next March, it will tell us whether the alliance of African, South American and Oceanian federations still carries enough weight to keep Infantino in office, or whether the European rebellion has found enough allies to end his decade in charge.
