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Uefa, the Asian Football Confederation and Concacaf will push for Gianni Infantino to resign after writing an open letter calling for “leadership that serves football, not seeks to command it”.
In a dramatic escalation of the war that has threatened to tear football apart since details emerged of the Fifa president’s failed Football Forward Enterprise scheme, the three governing bodies accused Infantino of “trust broken through deception” and condemned his failure to acknowledge that the proposal should not have been unilaterally launched.
The three confederations have started preliminary discussions about the organisation of new competitions along with Uefa’s repeated threats to boycott Fifa events. As things stand, next month’s under-20 women’s World Cup could take place without European teams and alternative options are being sought.
The letter is signed by the Uefa president, Aleksander Ceferin, his AFC counterpart, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, and the Concacaf president, Victor Montagliani. Efforts to unite around a suitable candidate to replace Infantino have stepped up since his privately backed plan was revealed and Montagliani is believed to be among the contenders.
“Leadership in football is not a possession,” part of the letter reads. “It is not about holding – or demanding – power to be held. It is a duty of service to the football family that entrusts it. When trust is broken through deception, when an individual places himself above the collective that entrusted him with authority, that duty has been abandoned.”
It strongly criticises Fifa’s response to the crisis, when a meeting between a small number of senior staff in Rabat was followed by an apology from Infantino that appeared not to show remorse for the scheme.
“It treats this as a failure of communication, when what football witnessed was a failure of judgment,” the letter says. “It did not acknowledge that the proposal itself was inherently wrong. There remains no recognition that attempting to sell an interest in the Fifa World Cup was a profound failure of judgment – not just a procedural misstep, but a fundamental breach of trust with the very institutions Fifa exists to serve.”
The three presidents also call for an independent review, conducted by a body outside football, into the affair. Fifa had previously committed to presenting a full report to the Fifa Council at its next scheduled meeting.
The letter directly addresses concerns that countries may lose out on financial aid under a different leadership, saying it is “[not] about any member association losing the support it has earned, despite the fearmongering directed at our leadership to suggest otherwise”.
The letter concludes: “There is silence where there should be accountability, distance where there should be openness … Football’s strength has always been its unity. We call for that unity to be honoured now, with leadership that serves football, not seeks to command it.”
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Any candidates for the Fifa election must announce their bid by 18 November. The confederations are understood to consider all options in their push for Infantino to be replaced, provided they fit within Fifa’s statutes and governance framework.
While the letter outlines the stances of the three confederations, and particularly their leaderships, the story is more complicated within individual member associations. Few outside Europe have been willing to come out publicly against Infantino and only a small minority have been tempted to recall the letters of support they had sent backing his re-election next March. The influential African and South American confederations, Caf and Conmebol, have come out backing Infantino in recent days.
A number of larger member associations have written to Infantino asking for a meeting where he would be required to explain his actions around the FFE scheme. No response has been received. Nor has Infantino been in touch with federations to address his leading role in the turmoil.
