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For Gianni Infantino there is no international break. The Fifa president is widely expected to make an appearance at the United Nations general assembly this week in New York, where he will lobby heads of state for their federations’ support as he continues his campaign to be re-elected next year.
Infantino has not been idle during the lull since Fifa abandoned its World Cup sell-off plan last month, instead crisscrossing the globe on a private jet provided by Qatar Airways as part of its sponsorship deal with world football’s governing body.
From his strongholds in Doha, Rabat and Miami, Infantino has also visited Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Kyrgyzstan and various other countries, his trips often coinciding with the approval of funding for development projects worth millions of dollars. His would-be opponents have been conspicuous by their silence.
Whether Qatar Airways facilitating Infantino’s re-election campaign should be considered legitimate Fifa presidential business is a moot point, which neatly encapsulates the huge incumbency bias that will benefit Infantino if a vote takes place at the Fifa congress in March. That ballot appears to be in doubt, with multiple sources involved in the push to remove Infantino telling the Guardian they are running out of hope of finding a candidate to beat him.
Although dozens of the 200 member associations that had submitted letters of endorsement for Infantino withdrew them after the emergence of his Fifa Forward Enterprise sale plan in July, the prevailing view is that the silent majority remain steadfastly behind him.
A meeting with the Caribbean Football Union, where funding projects were approved, may have splintered the vote at Concacaf – the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation – and there are increasing concerns that the European alliance may not be watertight.
“As long as Gianni is running, I don’t think anyone else will raise their hand,” one source said. “They would effectively be running against Fifa the institution. Fifa declared his candidacy, provides staff, aeroplanes and cars, even a personal video team.
“If he doesn’t step down before March, the election will not be contested. Uefa and others could stage a boycott so the victory would be tainted, but Gianni will win a clear majority of whoever shows up.”
Infantino first declared at the April congress in Vancouver his intention to seek a fourth and final term of office. Fifa statutes limit presidents to three full terms but under a recent change he will be permitted a fourth because his first term lasted three years, rather than the usual four, after his 2016 election to replace the disgraced Sepp Blatter.
The 56-year-old reasserted his intention to stand after attending the first match of the Under-20 Women’s World Cup in Poland a fortnight ago. That came via a statement issued by Fifa’s media team.
As it stands Infantino does not have an opponent, despite Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation calling for him to go. Beyond the obvious difficulties of taking on an incumbent who controls the machinery of office and funding budgets – the last Fifa president beaten at the ballot box was Sir Stanley Rous in 1974 – there are specific reasons why none of the would-be candidates have declared.
The most credible challenger is regarded as Concacaf’s president, Victor Montagliani, but the Canadian is committed to standing for re-election at his confederation, and the vote is due to take place in February. Standing in both elections is not regarded as feasible, and Montagliani is understandably reluctant to walk away from Concacaf in favour of fighting a potentially losing battle against Infantino.
The AFC president, Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, was beaten by Infantino in the 2016 election, the only time Infantino has faced an electoral opponent, and is further hamstrung by the fact that his confederation’s main powers, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, are backing Infantino. Qatar’s position would also appear to rule out a challenge from Nasser al-Khelaifi, the chair of European Football Clubs, and an openly European move led by Uefa’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, would have no chance of success. Ceferin, in any case, has his own presidential contest in March to focus on.
To compound the difficulties for Infantino’s would-be challengers, any election would be a secret ballot, making any promises from member associations during the campaign period all but worthless. As a result, Uefa is focusing most of its efforts on legal avenues to remove Infantino, accusing him of “criminal mismanagement” in a 56-page document lodged with US state courts in New York, Miami and Colorado last month seeking the disclosure of all documents relating to FFE.
Fifa responded strongly the week after Uefa made its legal complaint, filing a response in New York in which it sought to block the discovery process. Its submission accused Uefa of mounting a smear campaign against Infantino in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing.
Fifa’s submission said: “Uefa’s application suffers from a fundamental defect: Uefa seeks discovery in aid of a foreign criminal proceeding that does not exist and that Uefa admittedly lacks the authority to initiate.
“While these applications are styled as legal pleadings with captions and docket numbers, they are little more than press releases in further support of Uefa’s smear campaign against Fifa and its leadership.”
Although there is widespread confidence that at least one of the three jurisdictions will grant discovery, the process grants Fifa the right of appeal, so there is little prospect of new material being made public before the 18 November deadline for presidential candidates to come forward.
An initial decision from the courts is expected next month, but an appeal from the losing party appears inevitable whatever the outcome.
“The issue with discovery is that it takes a long time,” a source said. “It’s likely to run beyond the date of the election in March. If the process is under way by then, Fifa congress could decide to wait until we find out what the courts discover and postpone the election. But there would still have to be a vote on that.”
Uefa’s not-so-secret hope is that the discovery process finds evidence that FFE was deliberately undervalued at $20bn (£15bn) to provide a guaranteed future windfall for Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital, which had seemingly agreed to pay $4.2bn for 21% of the new commercial venture, giving it a significant share of future Fifa revenues.
Thrive subsequently bought 20% of the LA Lakers last month as part of a larger transaction with the former Disney chief executive Bob Iger that valued the NBA franchise at $12.5bn, a deal that has further highlighted Infantino’s valuation of the World Cup.
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Fifa’s revenues for the four years to 2026 were $15bn, a figure projected to grow to $18bn over the next four-year cycle owing to larger broadcast deals, without accounting for any expansion of the World Cup and Club World Cup, which remains on the agenda.
A corporate fraud lawyer said that undervaluing FFE could potentially constitute a criminal offence by Fifa, a case Uefa would take to the Swiss courts. “If you’re doing a deal that is way off market then you are deceiving the stakeholders, in this case the member associations,” the legal source said. “That is criminal. If Uefa has a criminal case that’s where it will be. It’s about how the valuation was done, by whom, and what conflicts were there.
“All of that should come out during disclosure. If beyond that there were personal deals being struck on the side, that could also be criminal. All those details should be disclosed.”
Beyond the $20bn valuation, the identity of the would-be investors and Fifa’s claim that it would retain control over governance, very little has been made public about the development of FFE, with a sales deck produced by the US bank JP Morgan containing no details of a tender process, voting rights or future exit terms. A senior investment banker who has been involved in similar deals said it is inconceivable such details were not agreed before Thrive agreed to commit $4bn, albeit much of the funding was due from other investors.
“I don’t think Thrive was going to be involved with Fifa for the next 25 years,” they said. “This looks like a quick in-and-out play. The plan would have been to buy it low and sell it high. I think the investors saw an amazing deal.”
There is no evidence of any wrongdoing or criminality on the part of the any of the parties involved in the proposed FFE deal.
Thrive has revealed little about its intentions beyond a statement issued last month in which it presented FFE as a proposal to be voted on by Fifa’s members, rather than a done deal.
Significantly, however, it also expressed an element of regret at getting involved given the political backlash, which many within football have interpreted as an attempt to distance the firm from Infantino.
“It was an idea that every member association would vote on, not an obligation or determination,” Thrive said. “While we stand behind the motivations of FFE, we failed to appreciate the political dynamics of global football, and the lengths some would go to. Thrive has a long track record of being a partner to all constituents. Had we known what this would devolve into, we would not have gotten involved.”
Uefa and Concacaf, in particular, appear prepared to dig in for the long haul, despite concerns that Infantino will be re-elected. The two confederations are continuing to work together to develop a unified Nations League competition, revealed by the Guardian last month, and last week wrote a joint letter to Fifa demanding that it release funds from its $6bn reserves to fund an additional payment of at least $10m to each of its 211 member associations during the next four-year cycle.
Some sort of payment appears inevitable given Infantino promised to provide $20m more to the member associations via FFE, but Uefa and Concacaf are hoping Infantino does not accrue political and electoral credit for it.
Ceferin and Montagliani are expected to meet at next week’s general assembly of the European Football Clubs in Copenhagen, where Infantino may also make an appearance. Infantino addressed the EFC’s 900 members at last year’s EFC meeting in Rome, where his suggestion that more international tournaments should take place during European winters to accommodate the global south caused controversy, although that pales compared with his pronouncements and plans since.
Uefa has made one accommodation with Fifa by withdrawing its threat to boycott the Under-20 Women’s World Cup that finishes on Sunday, and Infantino has agreed to its demand to commission an external governance review, which he communicated in a letter to the member associations this week. Suggestions that this move could lead to a truce with Uefa are given short shrift by those close to the leadership.
Despite the electoral gloom, those agitating for change are also clinging to memories of the fate of Infantino’s predecessor, Blatter, who was forced to resign in 2015 amid an FBI corruption investigation days after winning a fifth term against Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan. Blatter himself has never been charged in relation to the investigation.
For those looking to remove Infantino, the presidential election is not necessarily the end of the process. “This is a fight to the death now and we have to keep going,” one source said.
“The fact that Gianni is the only guy running at the moment does not mean it’s over. Look what happened to Blatter. He was re-elected in May 2015, but was gone in June. Eventually the truth will come out.”
