FIFA is set to remain under the guidance of Gianni Infantino after the sitting president of football’s governing body revealed that the Swiss national has a clear run to re-election in 2023 as reported by The Athletic.
A statement released by FIFA cited no other candidate being up for election in the upcoming congress to take place in Kenya in March of 2023.
“Following the call for election issued by the FIFA Council on 30 March 2022, FIFA’s member associations have proposed, in due time and form, the following candidate for the presidential election due to take place at the 73rd FIFA Congress in Kigali, Rwanda, on 16 March 2023: Mr. Gianni Infantino.”
In what will be his third term at the top of football’s global pyramid, Infantino stands unopposed as the only candidate up for consideration next year, having first risen to his current office back in February 2016 after FIFA’s Extraordinary Congress only to then be re-elected for the first time three years later.
The Swiss-born son of Italian immigrants, Infantino first cut his teeth in the footballing world when he was posted as Secretary General of the International Center for Sports Studies (CIES) at the University of Neuchâtel before receiving his first position at UEFA back in 2000 before being promoted to Director of UEFA’s Legal Affairs and Club Licensing Division four years later.
Since then, Infantino’s influence in the highest rungs of the game has only increased but has already come under a mountain of scrutiny dating back to 2016 after being the target of ethics investigations while he has been at the center of unpopular confirmed World Cup bids from both Russia and Qatar.
The 2022 World Cup in Qatar has, by and large, been received poorly by most avenues around the world not only for continued connections to bribery in regards to how the nation won its bid to host the global spectacle but the nation’s stance on a myriad of social and political issues that many participating nations are staunch adversaries of.
Infantino recently sent an open letter to all 32 nations that are set to open hostilities in Qatar this weekend where he, along with FIFA secretary general Fatma Samoura urged those involved to “let football take center stage” while keeping out of politics.
While Infantino has garnered plenty of support in the upper echelons of the sport, there could well be many across the sport that will feel his clear pathway to keeping his position speaks to other nefarious circumstances.
