Infantino has competitors for the post of FIFA president after the scandal. What you need to know

The scandal over the initiative of the International Football Federation (FIFA) to attract investors to manage the commercial rights of the World Cup has negatively affected the reputation of the organization's president Gianni Infantino. New elections for this post will be held next year, in which, for the first time in 11 years, the Swiss can compete. How the head of FIFA is elected and who else is applying for this position is described in the Izvestia article.

How are the FIFA presidential elections going?

• FIFA presidential elections usually take place in the year following the World Cup. The procedure is conducted at a congress attended by all 211 national football associations. The next elections are scheduled to take place on March 18, 2027 at the congress in Morocco. The Head of FIFA is elected for a four-year term and can hold this position for no more than three terms.

• Candidates for the post of world football leader must fulfill several requirements. Firstly, they need to be actively involved in the development of football in some role for two of the five years preceding the vote. Secondly, it is necessary to enlist the support of at least five national associations at least four months before the vote. Thus, you should apply for the upcoming elections by November 18.

• The voting procedure depends on how many candidates apply. If he is alone, he will be automatically approved during the FIFA congress. If there are two candidates, the winner will be the one who gets a simple majority of votes from the national associations, that is, more than 106. If three or more candidates participate in the elections, then two-thirds of the votes must be obtained to win in the first round. If this does not happen, the last participant is eliminated, and then the procedure is repeated again.

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• Current FIFA President Gianni Infantino has held this position since 2016. Then he was elected at an extraordinary congress organized after the resignation of Sepp Blatter due to a corruption scandal. Infantino, at that time the secretary general of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), participated in the elections with four other competitors, the main of whom was the president of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa from Bahrain. The Swiss won the second round with 115 votes.

• The three years until the next election were not counted by Infantino as a first term. He was re-elected twice as the sole candidate in 2019 and 2023, and now he can run again for his last term. Until recently, it was assumed that Infantino would be approved again on an uncontested basis. However, after the scandal with the attempt to sell the commercial rights to the World Cup, the football community began to discuss that FIFA needed new candidates to replace the current president.

Main competitors

• So far, no football official, except Infantino himself, has announced plans to participate in the FIFA presidential election. Al Khalifa is considered his most likely rival. After the defeat in 2016, he assumed the post of vice-president of FIFA, while continuing to head the AFC. His term of office in the regional confederation just expires in 2027.

• The fact that Al Khalifa is not fully satisfied with the state of affairs at FIFA can be seen from the letter he sent to Asian associations at the height of the commercial rights scandal. The Sheikh called the lack of consultation on the plan completely unacceptable. Later, the AFC issued a statement calling on FIFA to "urgently review its management and decision-making system," which can be seen as a hint at a change of leadership in the football organization.

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• Another potential candidate for FIFA leadership is Canadian businessman Victor Montagliani. Since 2012, he has been the head of the Canadian Football Federation and, in this position, secured the award of the rights to host the 2026 World Cup matches to his country. In 2024, Montagliani was elected president of the Confederation of North and Central American and Caribbean Football (CONCACAF). His organization also expressed dissatisfaction with Infantino's recent actions and rejected his offer to sell the rights.

• Montagliani is fluent in French, Spanish and Italian in addition to English, which may help him gain the support of national associations. When he ran for the post of head of CONCACAF, he personally traveled all 41 countries belonging to the confederation. Montagliani's advantage, like Al Khalifa's, is that he does not represent the UEFA zone to which the Swiss Blatter and Infantino belonged, which may give him the sympathy of numerous non-European associations.

In recent years, Qatari businessman Nasser Al-Khelaifi has become one of the most influential people in the football world. Since 2011, he has been the president of the French PSG, which under his leadership has become one of the strongest clubs in the world and a two-time winner of the Champions League. Al-Khelaifi also heads the Association of European Clubs and, in this capacity, is a member of the UEFA executive committee, thus representing Infantino's most disgruntled confederation. In this regard, the media began discussing his possible participation in the elections, but a BBC source said that the Qatari categorically did not want to switch to another job.