"He's going nowhere." That's how a senior world football executive summed up Gianni Infantino's position to Reuters — and the people who wanted him gone appear to have missed their window. But surviving politically and actually running FIFA are two very different things, and that gap is where the real fight is now headed.
The crisis triggered by Infantino's abandoned plan to sell a 20% stake in FIFA's commercial rights — including World Cup-linked assets — to private investors has shifted from a succession question to a power struggle. The project was killed in July after UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF pushed back hard. Infantino dropped it. He's still standing. And yet, according to multiple senior football officials, the fallout is far from over.
A cold war with no clear ending
UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin didn't mince words this week. "The project that shattered the unity of world football may be abolished, but the trust it broke has not returned," he said in a video address to the Portugal Football Summit. "Football is not for sale." He didn't name Infantino. He didn't need to.
Infantino's response — a letter to the FIFA Council proposing an independent governance review and broader stakeholder consultations — was quickly dismissed by several European federations. As olive branches go, it landed with a thud.
The scenario now taking shape, independently described to Reuters by multiple senior officials, is what one veteran sports executive called a "hot-cold war": clubs fighting over the Club World Cup and player release; player representatives contesting the international calendar; national associations obstructing new initiatives; confederations challenging competition expansion. Not a clean break from FIFA. Just death by a thousand blocked proposals.
"Maybe it seems like we're boiling down to two options," one senior world football executive said. "One, a compromise where Gianni gives up some of his power and there are some new bodies that are created. Or two, a permanent hot-cold war where all the stakeholders just fight every issue."
That kind of attritional gridlock would have real consequences for anyone with money on FIFA delivering its next round of expanded competitions on schedule. Every new World Cup format, every Club World Cup iteration, every commercial deal becomes a negotiation with hostile stakeholders rather than a decree from the top. Odds on smooth delivery of any of it just lengthened considerably.
Infantino is rebuilding — quietly
Here's the complicating factor: Infantino has more time than his opponents may have accounted for. The FIFA presidential election isn't until March 2027. He has months of confederation events, tournaments and congresses ahead — particularly in Africa — where he can shore up support among the smaller associations that collectively carry enormous voting weight.
A proposal from Ceferin and CONCACAF President Victor Montagliani to distribute at least $10 million from FIFA reserves to each of its 211 member associations next cycle is politically interesting. For cash-dependent smaller federations, that kind of sum changes the calculus on who they back and how loudly they oppose anyone.
One national association president told Reuters that Infantino's opponents "missed their best opportunity" when the backlash peaked and that he's now steadily rebuilding toward reelection. If he gets there, some federations currently opposed to him may quietly soften — not out of conviction, but because four years of open warfare with the president of world football has limited upside.
There is a historical footnote worth sitting with here. The post-Blatter reforms were explicitly designed to reduce the power concentrated in the FIFA presidency. Two decades later, senior figures inside the game are fighting the same battle again. "Unprecedented," is how one veteran international sports executive described the prospect of sustained internal civil war. "This will be new territory."
The question hanging over everything isn't whether Infantino survives. It's whether the presidency he holds at the end of this is worth anything.
