FIFA president Gianni Infantino has said he is willing to support additional funding for the governing body's member associations, a move widely read as an attempt to ease mounting opposition ahead of his bid for re-election. In a letter to the heads of football's six regional confederations, he said the size of any payouts will be discussed at a meeting of the FIFA Council on October 15.
"I will not prejudge the amount," Infantino wrote, according to reports. He said he would back "the greatest level of additional funding that can responsibly be delivered through FIFA's proper governance process," with transparent and auditable arrangements. He added that a single figure could start the discussion but could not settle a global policy, and that he has told the Secretary General to combine all submissions into one integrated assessment for the Council.
The letter responds to a request from UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin and Victor Montagliani, who heads CONCACAF, the confederation for North and Central America and the Caribbean. They asked that each of FIFA's 211 member associations receive at least $10m from the organisation's reserves, a package reported to total about 1.85 billion euros. The head of the Asian Football Confederation, Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, is reported to have made a similar request. The October meeting will be the Council's first since Infantino's plan to open the World Cup and other tournaments to private investors collapsed.
That plan would have sold roughly 20 percent of a new entity, FIFA Forward Enterprise, which would handle the commercial and operational side of FIFA tournaments. Each member nation would have received at least $20m. Investors were to include Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump, who is a close ally of Infantino. Infantino later dropped the idea but has defended it, saying it was meant to let FIFA invest more in football, not to replace support that could responsibly be paid from existing resources.
The fallout has been considerable. UEFA, CONCACAF and the AFC have called on the 56-year-old Swiss-Italian to resign. On Friday, the English Premier League and the top leagues of Spain, Italy and Germany issued a joint statement calling for governance reform and accusing him of promoting "exploitative ideas rather than safeguarding against them." Critics and rights groups have also asked FIFA's Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee to block a re-election bid.
Infantino has refused to step down and plans to run in March. FIFA presidents are limited to three four-year terms, but in 2022 he successfully argued that his first period in office, which began in 2016 after Sepp Blatter's resignation, completed an interrupted mandate and should not count. With about seven weeks left for candidates to declare, no challenger has come forward. The funding debate will show whether Infantino can win back the regional bodies whose support has traditionally sustained him.