By Ahmad Ali, Sports Editor
Aleksander Ceferin has ruled himself out of running for the Fifa presidency, telling Gianni Infantino that he should either accept he has lost the room and stand down, or prepare to be challenged at the ballot box in Morocco next March.
Speaking on The Rest is Politics podcast, the Uefa president — the man bookmakers had installed as favourite to succeed Infantino — was unambiguous. “I’m not interested because of two reasons,” Ceferin said. “One reason is that I love Uefa and I love working here, and I think that at a certain point it’s time to also enjoy life a bit. And the second point is, my credibility is much, much higher if I’m not interested in the position.”
That second sentence is the one that matters. Ceferin has spent four weeks leading a revolt against the Fifa president over the aborted plan to sell private stakes in world football’s biggest tournaments. By removing himself from the race, he strips Infantino’s allies of their most useful line of defence: that Europe’s opposition was never about governance at all, but about a Slovenian lawyer wanting the job.
The plan that fractured Fifa
The crisis has moved at extraordinary speed. Fifa Forward Enterprise, the vehicle that would have allowed outside investors to buy into the men’s and women’s World Cups, was pushed onto the agenda in July. On 30-31 July, all 55 Uefa member associations voted unanimously to boycott Fifa competitions if it proceeded, describing the proposal as “both irresponsible and indefensible”. Ceferin’s line at the time — “The World Cup is not for sale” — travelled further than any Uefa statement in a decade.
Within 48 hours the structure had collapsed. Carlos Cordeiro, Infantino’s senior adviser and the former US Soccer president, resigned. Fifa’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour alleged that staff had been misled about what the plan actually involved. On 1 August, Fifa withdrew the proposal entirely. Uefa’s response was not relief but escalation: it said it had “lost confidence” in the president.
Three of the six confederations — Uefa, Concacaf and the AFC — have accused Infantino of deception. The four British associations and the Republic of Ireland have withdrawn support. Caf and Conmebol, the blocs that have underwritten Infantino’s power since 2016, are still standing with him. Ceferin, who says he has not spoken to Infantino since the row began, is alert to how that support is being maintained: “What I hear is that they play on, you know, ‘arrogant Europe is against us’.”
The arithmetic of March
Fifa’s presidential election takes place at the Congress in Morocco in March 2027, with nominations closing on 18 November. Ceferin’s forecast is blunt. “There are two options,” he said — either Infantino recognises he no longer commands the support to continue, or a challenger emerges. “He will have a candidate against him. I don’t know yet who.”
The names being weighed across the game include:
- Nasser al-Khelaifi, the Paris St-Germain president and Uefa executive committee member, viewed by many as the most plausible consensus figure;
- Victor Montagliani, the Concacaf president and Fifa vice-president who oversaw the 2026 World Cup hosting bid;
- Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, the AFC president, who lost to Infantino in the 2016 election;
- Patrice Motsepe, the Caf president and South African billionaire, an outsider whose candidacy would test Infantino’s African base.
The maths is not straightforward. Fifa’s one-nation-one-vote system means Uefa’s 55 members carry no more weight than Caf’s 54, and Infantino has spent a decade building relationships in the confederations that Europe cannot reach. A challenger needs the AFC and Concacaf blocs to hold firm and a meaningful share of Africa to defect. That is a heavy lift in seven months.
History rhymes, but not exactly
There is an obvious echo here. Ceferin himself was elected in Athens in September 2016, an unknown outside the Slovenian federation, elevated after Michel Platini’s ban left European football leaderless. Fifa’s last leadership change came from crisis rather than campaigning. Infantino, similarly, won in 2016 as the compromise candidate nobody had fancied a year earlier.
What is different now is that the challenge is institutional rather than legal. Nobody has been arrested. Infantino has not been charged with anything. He simply lost the confidence of half his own membership over a proposal he then abandoned — and confidence, once gone from a football administration, has historically proved impossible to rebuild in an election year.
Ceferin is not a disinterested party in any of this. His own Uefa mandate runs to 2027, and he has form for making declarations about his future that circumstances later complicate — most memorably in Paris in 2024, when he backed a statute change permitting a fourth term and then announced within hours that he would not use it. Sceptics will file this week’s remarks in the same drawer.
But the strategic logic holds regardless of motive. A Ceferin who cannot benefit personally from Infantino’s departure is a far more dangerous opponent than one who can. He has handed the reform argument to somebody else to carry, and kept the moral high ground for himself. Infantino now has until 18 November to find out whether anyone picks it up.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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