Gianni Infantino isn't going anywhere. The FIFA president, defiant in Baku ahead of the inaugural Under-15 World Cup & Festival, made that abundantly clear on Saturday — and he's got the numbers to back it up.
"The vast, vast majority" is how he described world football's support for him. That's not just spin. The Asian Football Confederation gave him a full endorsement in Tokyo. CAF countries lined up behind him in Cape Verde. With 211 member associations holding votes, UEFA's opposition — however loud — doesn't automatically translate into a leadership crisis.
The UEFA problem won't disappear with handshakes
Ceferin and Infantino were photographed shaking hands at the FIFA Council meeting in Zurich on October 15. They sat at the same dinner the night before. None of that has softened UEFA's position by a single degree.
UEFA's legal case against FIFA in the United States — triggered by the abandoned FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, which would have sold stakes in FIFA competitions including the World Cup to private investors — is still very much active. And Infantino's answer to UEFA's 42 outstanding questions? He pointed at "the ongoing legal process" and said they'd answer "as far as the process allows." That's not a reconciliation. That's a holding pattern.
What makes this more complicated is the timeline. The AFC's endorsement arrived just over two months after its own president, Sheikh Salman, co-signed a letter alongside Ceferin and Concacaf's Victor Montagliani demanding Infantino resign. Associations move when they sense which way the wind is blowing, and right now it's blowing toward a fourth Infantino term at the March election.
A fourth term looking increasingly likely
Infantino framed everything in the language of democracy — everyone has the same vote, football belongs to everyone, differences of opinion are healthy. It's deliberately constructed to make UEFA's resistance look like a regional power bloc trying to override the global south. Whether you buy that framing or not, it's effective political messaging.
"There is nothing bad in disagreeing," he said. "It's OK to disagree. It's OK to have different points of view, but then we need to be able to move on."
Moving on, in Infantino's vocabulary, apparently means pressing forward toward March regardless of what UEFA thinks. Those betting on a leadership change at FIFA before the election are running out of road fast.
