Gianni Infantino faces questioning by Fifa council members over his involvement in an aborted World Cup sell-off plan, the Folarin Balogun affair and the decision to award Donald Trump the inaugural Fifa peace prize. The discussions take place at a heated meeting at the world governing body’s headquarters in Zurich on Thursday.
The Fifa president rejected repeated calls for an extraordinary general meeting of the council during the summer. Those calls followed the emergence of the Fifa Forward Enterprise proposals. This session marks the first time he meets his critics in person since those disclosures, with one attendee predicting that the talks could be explosive.
Aleksander Ceferin, Victor Montagliani and Sheikh Salman Bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa will be in attendance in Switzerland. The presidents of Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation have all previously called for Infantino to resign. They intend to press home demands for an independent review of Fifa’s governance.
Infantino pledged to commission an external review of Fifa’s future governance in response to letters sent last month by Ceferin, Montagliani and Salman. However, no details have been forthcoming. Officials are sceptical over whether any inquiry will be truly independent.
Alongside the enterprise proposals, Balogun and the peace prize, Infantino is likely to face questions about financial disclosures. A report published this week stated that he received a second salary of about £1.3m in 2024. That amount was in addition to the £3.9m declared in Fifa’s accounts.
US Internal Revenue Service filings show a Fifa subsidiary in charge of running last summer’s tournament paid Infantino $1.76m. The payment was not mentioned in Fifa’s annual report. In that report, his salary is recorded as 4.27m Swiss francs, equivalent to £3.88m.
Fifa statutes state that the individual compensation of the Fifa president must be made public. The governing body has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the payment.
Fifa stated that it does not pay a second salary to the president and complies with all reporting requirements in relation to compensation. The organisation added that the president’s annual compensation, as well as other contractual benefits, are decided by the independent compensation subcommittee.
Fifa strongly rejected any claims that it has failed to disclose financial information and violated statutes. The body maintained that its accounts are independently audited and that all declarations align with tax regulations in Switzerland, the United States and elsewhere.
Despite these controversies and the public opposition of the European, Asian and North and Central American and Caribbean confederations, Infantino remains on course to be re-elected unopposed in March. Montagliani rejected calls to stand against Infantino to focus on being re-elected as Concacaf president.
Uefa has yet to find an alternative candidate. European officials tentatively sounded out high-profile footballing figures including Arsène Wenger and Michele Kang, who owns clubs including London City Lionesses. The deadline for candidates to declare their intention to stand is 18 November, with the election scheduled at the Fifa congress in Rabat on 18 March.
