UEFA, CONCACAF and the AFC are drafting a replacement governance model for world football
Infantino's opponents have started writing their own blueprint for FIFA — and have opened preliminary talks about running competitions of their own.
The three confederations that have asked Gianni Infantino to resign are no longer just asking. UEFA, CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation are jointly drafting a policy document setting out how world football should be governed instead — what FIFA's role should actually be, how it should be structured, and how its money should be distributed to the 211 member associations.
The trigger is what has not happened. Since the plan to sell part of the World Cup's commercial rights to private investors became public a fortnight ago, the three bodies have repeatedly called for an independent review of FIFA's governance. FIFA has not commissioned one. A source with knowledge of the discussions told the Guardian that the rebels have now started writing the alternative themselves.
The line that matters to anyone who builds tournaments
A governance paper, on its own, is a document. The detail underneath it is not. After issuing a joint statement on Monday calling for "leadership that serves football, not seeks to command it", the three confederations let it be known that they have begun preliminary discussions about organising new competitions if the standoff continues.
That is the part with a supply chain attached. A World Cup's commercial value is not the trophy; it is the teams, and the confederations are where the teams come from. UEFA, CONCACAF and the AFC between them cover 136 of the 211 associations that vote in March's presidential election, and they also control the calendar slots any new competition would have to occupy. A tournament run by that group would need venues, hosts, broadcast partners, sponsors, contractors and staff — the same market that currently builds FIFA's events, bidding for a second set.
Nobody has announced anything. But the industry now has two possible futures to plan against rather than one, and the people saying so are the ones who would have to sanction either.
Where the framework ends up depends on one decision
If Infantino engages with the review, the document is a reform proposal. If he does not, it has two other destinations: it becomes the platform of a challenger at the presidential election in March, or the template for a breakaway body.
CONCACAF's president, Victor Montagliani, is regarded as the most likely challenger, though he has said his own focus is on being re-elected to his confederation role. Monday's joint statement carried a clear echo of the line he used at FIFA's congress in Vancouver this year: "Let me be frank, leadership is not about power."
The money is the real argument
Financial distribution sits at the centre of the drafting, with particular attention to how FIFA's reserves — estimated at around $5bn — should be deployed among member associations. That is not an abstraction for the events business. Those reserves are the source of the development and infrastructure money that reaches national federations, and the aborted sell-off was itself pitched to associations as a way to double what they receive.
The nearest test is close. UEFA is still holding to its position that its members will boycott next month's Under-20 Women's World Cup unless FIFA sets up an independent review and gives legally binding assurances that a sell-off will not be attempted again. That would be the first FIFA tournament to be delivered with a confederation's teams missing — and the first hard measurement of what a governing body's authority is worth when the associations stop agreeing to it.
