Three confederations want a no-confidence vote in Infantino. FIFA's rulebook does not have one.
UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF are weighing a move against the president, but the only route in the statutes is an extraordinary congress requisitioned by 43 of FIFA's 211 members.
Three of football's six regional confederations β UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF β are weighing a no-confidence vote in Gianni Infantino. They have a problem: FIFA's statutes do not contain one.
There is no provision anywhere in the rulebook for removing or censuring a sitting FIFA president mid-term. What the statutes do offer is an Extraordinary Congress. The FIFA Council can call one whenever it likes, which is not a route open to the president's opponents. The other route is a written request from at least one fifth of the 211 member associations β 43 of them β specifying what is to be discussed. Once that lands, FIFA has three months to convene the meeting, and every association that turns up has one vote.
The arithmetic runs into the calendar
That three-month window is the awkward part. Nominations for the presidency close on 18 November, and the election itself is in March. A requisition filed now would produce a congress at roughly the moment the candidate list is being finalised β which means the practical question is not whether the members can be assembled, but whether assembling them changes who is on the ballot.
One person involved put the alternatives bluntly to Al Jazeera, speaking anonymously: "There is no way out. Either he goes the peaceful way and decides not to stand in March or he goes the hard way."
The split is between confederations and their own members
The revolt began with the abandoned plan to sell private investors a stake in FIFA's commercial arm, including the World Cup, and it has never resolved into a clean continental divide. Three confederations are now contemplating the hardest available move. A fourth, CAF, has publicly restated its support for the president. And six Arab associations β whose national federations sit inside two of the confederations lining up against him, including 2030 World Cup co-host Morocco and Qatar β have backed him too.
So the confederation leaderships and the associations that constitute them are not reliably pointing the same way, which matters enormously in a chamber where the vote belongs to the association rather than the region.
FIFA has not commented on the no-confidence discussions. It has apologised to its members for how the investment proposal was handled. No challenger has publicly declared with the November nomination deadline approaching, and Infantino has said he intends to stand.
