In August the FIFA presidential election came down to a target: 106 votes. Now it has a count. Gianni Infantino has 87, his opponents have 49 and no candidate, and the 75 federations in between will decide who runs world football until 2031. The angle comes from the Associated Press tally published on Tuesday.
When we counted the votes in August, the only number that mattered was 106, the simple majority of FIFA’s 211 member associations. There is now a number to set against it. An Associated Press tally shows 87 federations have indicated support for Infantino, either individually or by endorsing their confederation’s statement of support, and 49, mostly in Europe, have come out against him. That leaves 75 still to declare. Infantino needs 19 of them. A challenger would need 57, and there is not yet a challenger.
The 87 rest on two continents and a bloc. All 10 South American federations have endorsed him, including World Cup finalists Argentina, and the AP’s count reflects the African backing he has held throughout. The bloc is the Arab world. At a meeting in Jeddah, 21 of the 22 members of the Union of Arab Football Associations backed him, with Jordan the only exception. Jordan’s federation is led by Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, a long-standing opponent of FIFA’s establishment. Elsewhere, Qatar and Mexico have declared for Infantino, as have the Solomon Islands, Tahiti and New Caledonia in Oceania, while New Zealand withdrew its support in August.
The 49 are a list of the federations that built modern football. France, England and Belgium are among those that have withdrawn their support, and last week Infantino lost the backing of his home federation, Switzerland, which said its conditions on credibility, transparency and accountability were no longer being met. UEFA has also said it is preparing a criminal complaint against him over the investment plan. On the other side of the Atlantic, Canada is among the federations opposing him.
Asia is where the arithmetic gets interesting. The Asian Football Confederation has openly distanced itself from FIFA’s current leadership, and its leadership is among those backing UEFA’s promise to put up a challenger. Yet twelve of the Arab union’s members belong to the Asian confederation, and all of them except Jordan have just declared for Infantino. A confederation that wants a challenger cannot deliver its own members’ votes. That is not a detail. It is the reason Infantino’s 87 looks more solid than the opposition’s 49.
Now compare the two tasks. Infantino needs roughly one in four of the uncommitted. His opponents need three in four, for a candidate they have yet to name. Nominations close on 18 November, and the vote is on 18 March in Rabat. According to reports from the Berlin meeting, UEFA has considered waiting until late October to name its candidate, to give the incumbent less time to lobby against them. That is a sensible tactic. It is also an admission that the challenger, whoever it is, will start the race weeks behind a man who has been campaigning around the world for months.
History is on the incumbent’s side too. As the AP points out, no sitting FIFA president has lost an election in the last 50 years, and the power to distribute World Cup profits has always been the incumbent’s biggest advantage. That power is about to be exercised. The FIFA Council meets on 15 October to decide how much extra money to release from FIFA’s reserves to the 211 associations. As we argued last week, whatever the Council approves, it is the man already in office who will be seen to have paid it, and it will land on 75 federations that have not yet made up their minds.
None of these numbers is a vote. Endorsements made in public, sometimes through a confederation statement rather than a federation’s own, are promises, and promises shift. The opposition’s whole case is that they will shift. But the count tells you where the burden lies. In August, 106 was a target both sides had to reach. In October, Infantino is 19 short, and the people trying to stop him are 57 short, without a name to put on the ballot.
Sources: Associated Press (via The Washington Times and Medicine Hat News), Japan Today, Inside the Games, Africa Soccer, Italpress, Time News.
