"We are writing to request that you rule Mr. Infantino ineligible to run again for the FIFA Presidency on the basis that he is already serving his third and final term." That's the opening shot from FairSquare, a non-profit, in a letter to FIFA dated August 13, 2026 — and it cuts straight to the bone of what's become a messy, increasingly ugly battle over who runs world football.
The math is straightforward. FIFA presidents are capped at three four-year terms. Infantino was elected in 2016, then won the 2019 and 2023 elections — both unopposed. That's three terms. Except FIFA doesn't see it that way.
The Ruling That Changed Everything
In December 2022, the FIFA Council declared that Infantino's first stint — 2016 to 2019 — doesn't count as a full term, on the grounds that he was essentially finishing off Sepp Blatter's mandate rather than serving one of his own. That internal ruling was never made publicly available. FairSquare want it thrown out.
Their legal argument is clean: "Neither the FIFA Statutes nor the FIFA Governance Regulations make any provision for a presidential term to be discounted because it did not last for the maximum period of four years." No exception clause. No grey area. The rule says three terms, Infantino has had three terms, end of discussion — at least by FairSquare's reading.
There's also a broader, more unsettling implication buried in their letter. If you can invalidate a term simply because it wasn't a full four years, what's to stop any FIFA president from calling a snap election early, resetting the clock, and running indefinitely? FairSquare call that scenario "plausible" given what they describe as Infantino's "various abuses of power." That's a striking phrase to put in a formal letter to a governing body.
The Votes Aren't There Even If He Gets to Stand
In practice, FIFA almost certainly won't revoke its own 2022 ruling. The argument that a new committee composition means old decisions are open for review is a precedent no governing body wants to set — it would open every prior decision to challenge the moment a single seat changes hands.
But even if Infantino makes it onto the March ballot, his position is genuinely fragile. UEFA, the AFC and Concacaf have all publicly opposed him. If their member associations vote along confederation lines, the arithmetic simply doesn't add up for Infantino — Africa, South America and Oceania's support may not be enough, and individual nations within those blocs will have done their own counting.
The opposition's real problem isn't Infantino. It's that they haven't landed on a candidate who can unite the factions that currently agree on very little except wanting him gone. Protest votes without a destination tend to scatter.
Worth noting too: UEFA is hardly clean on this issue. In February 2024, they struck off the first two years of Aleksander Čeferin's presidency — the same procedural trick, the same logic — allowing him to pursue a fourth term in 2027. FairSquare's letter lands hard, but football's governing bodies have a long history of making rules and then rewriting them when it suits the person in charge.
