It was a simple formality, and it was settled in a few minutes. Gianni Infantino was re-elected until 2027 to the presidency of Fifa, which he has held since 2016, without competition and by acclamation during the 73rd Congress of the body in Kigali (Rwanda) this Thursday.
The 52-year-old leader had already been reappointed under the same conditions in 2019 by the delegates of the 211 member federations. He could extend his reign at the helm of world football until 2031, with his first three-year tenure, which began after Sepp Blatter was suspended, considered incomplete.
Doubtful comparison
After his famous speech in the introduction to the last World Cup in Qatar, where he said “Today he feels Qatari, Arab, African, homosexual, disabled, migrant worker”, Infantino again did very well at the opening of the congress. comparing his unexpected election in 2016 with the way Rwanda had rebuilt itself after the 1994 genocide.
Not far from giving up as he was not a favourite, the former secretary general of the authority “then remembered [sa] visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial,” he said. “I asked myself the question of why I should be discouraged. How this country has recovered from this tragedy should inspire us all. So I continued the campaign, and was elected president of Fifa a few months later. Someone must have told him that was a good idea.
Comforted by this re-election, Gianni Infantino intends to usher in an era of superlatives, boosting competitions and revenues with his 104-game World Cup from 2026 and his 32-team Club World Cup from the summer of 2025. is approved, the second should be soon, with the aim of competing in the lucrative UEFA Champions League.
This race for expansion could well awaken the fractures of football: Wednesday evening the World League Forum (WLF), bringing together around forty championships, denounced decisions “without consultation”, which further weigh down “an already overloaded calendar, and take no account of the impact on the competitiveness of domestic leagues and the health of players”.