African football backs Infantino as the confederations split over the World Cup's commercial future
CAF votes unanimously for the FIFA president on the same day UEFA commits to boycotting future World Cups while he is in office.
Football's governing bodies have now split by continent over who controls the World Cup's commercial future. The Confederation of African Football's executive committee voted unanimously late on Thursday to reconfirm its support for Gianni Infantino — on the same day that UEFA said it is committed to boycotting future World Cups at all levels for as long as he remains FIFA president.
CAF's statement was brief and warm: the executive committee "unanimously reconfirmed its support for FIFA President Gianni Infantino and thanked him for his support for African football over the years". Its president, Patrice Motsepe, welcomed FIFA's pledge to review the process that produced the aborted plan to sell a slice of the World Cup's commercial future to private investors, and endorsed the joint update issued by Infantino and secretary general Mattias Grafstrom — while pressing the need for good governance, due process and transparency.
The arithmetic, not the argument, decides this
That leaves Infantino backed in Africa and opposed in Europe, North America and Asia, with a presidential election in Morocco next March. CAF accounts for 54 of FIFA's 211 member associations and has been a reliable bloc for him since he took office in 2016. It is not a majority, but it is the largest single body of votes anyone in this dispute has publicly secured, and it arrived in the week his position looked least safe.
The support was not spontaneous. Five of the continent's most influential football figures had already declared for him earlier in the week — CAF vice-president Fouzi Lekjaa of Morocco, FIFA Council members Hany Abo Rida of Egypt, Hamidou Djibrilla of Niger and Ahmed Yahya of Mauritania, and Veron Mosengo-Omba, the newly elected head of the DR Congo federation and a former CAF general secretary.
Why it matters to the industry
Everyone who builds, supplies or staffs a World Cup now has a governance question sitting underneath their planning: whether the confederation that supplies a large share of the teams intends to be at the next tournaments at all, and whether the president who signs off the commercial model will still be in post a year from now. Neither question gets answered by argument. Both get answered by 211 votes in Morocco in March, and the first bloc has just declared.
