Infantino on the brink as Fifa succession talk grows louder
Gianni Infantino’s grip on Fifa is looking shakier than it has at any point since he first took the presidency in 2016. The Swiss-Italian administrator abruptly abandoned plans to sell commercial stakes in the World Cup last week, a humiliating reversal that has prompted serious questions inside football’s governing body about whether his third term can survive the fallout.
What went wrong
The scheme, which sought to raise somewhere between $4 billion and $6 billion by selling minority shares in Fifa’s flagship tournament to private equity investors, collapsed after member associations revolted. It’s not the first time Infantino has overreached. But this failure felt different. Senior confederation officials who had quietly supported him for years didn’t bother hiding their frustration. One European football administrator, speaking without attribution, described the episode as “a catastrophic misreading of the room.”
The timing is brutal. The 2026 World Cup, jointly hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico, is less than 14 months away. Fifa cannot afford internal warfare right now.
Is he actually going?
Probably not voluntarily. Infantino won his third term unopposed in March 2023 and his mandate runs until 2027. He’s shown no public sign of stepping down, and those close to him insist he remains focused on delivering the 48-team tournament. Yet the whisper network inside Zurich headquarters has grown noticeably louder. Three senior Fifa council members are said to have discussed succession scenarios informally at a confederation meeting in April, though none will say so on the record.
Still, pressure campaigns in football governance rarely end cleanly or quickly.
The names being whispered
So who steps in if he goes? The most discussed name is Sonia Billings, the Concacaf general secretary, who has built a quiet reputation as a competent administrator with genuine cross-confederation support. She’s never held a Fifa executive role but that, some argue, is part of her appeal. A clean pair of hands.
From Africa, Patrice Motsepe, the South African billionaire who has led the Confederation of African Football since 2021, is another figure attracting attention. He has resources, a continental power base of 54 votes, and the kind of outsider credibility that plays well when incumbents stumble.
Inside the existing Fifa structure, deputy secretary general Mattias Grafström has admirers, though he’s seen as too much of an insider to represent meaningful change. And Victor Montagliani, the Concacaf president, has long harboured ambitions but struggled to build the African and Asian alliances any serious candidate needs.
What happens next
The coming weeks matter enormously. If Infantino can stabilise relationships with the major confederations before the World Cup cycle fully kicks in, he probably survives. If the commercial chaos deepens or legal scrutiny of the abandoned deal intensifies, the calculation changes fast. Fifa’s congress in 2025 is the next real pressure point. Watch who turns up, and who starts making calls they didn’t used to make.
