Aleksander Ceferin, the president of UEFA, said on Monday that he is not interested in the FIFA presidency, and in the same interview said that Gianni Infantino should leave it, Al Jazeera reports. He was speaking on The Rest is Politics podcast.
"There are two options," Ceferin said. "One option is that he realises that he doesn't have the support...And the second option, that he goes to the elections in March, but in that case I think he will have a candidate against him." The FIFA Congress is in Morocco in March.
Declining to run is part of the argument
Ceferin gave two reasons for not wanting the job: that he loves UEFA and values enjoying his life, and that staying out of it preserves his credibility.
The second reason is the operative one. A rival federation president calling for a resignation can always be read as a man clearing a path for himself, and the charge is hard to rebut while you are running. By ruling himself out first, Ceferin makes the call harder to dismiss as ambition. Whether that makes it disinterested is a separate question, and readers can weigh it.
He named no candidate he supports. Al Jazeera reports that Victor Montagliani of CONCACAF and Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa of the AFC have been mentioned as potential challengers.
What the dispute is actually about
The disagreement began over Infantino's plan for private investment in FIFA tournaments. UEFA threatened a boycott, and several federations withdrew their support.
That is the substance underneath the personality. Bringing outside capital into competitions changes who has a claim on the revenue and, over time, who decides what the calendar looks like. Confederations that run their own profitable tournaments have a direct interest in that answer.
Six Nordic associations said last week that they had lost confidence in Infantino, and Ceferin's remarks continue the same argument at a higher level.
The detail that says the most
Ceferin said he has not spoken to Infantino since the controversy began.
Two men who run the two most powerful bodies in world football, not talking, seven months before an election. That is a more reliable indicator of where this is heading than any of the quotes.
FIFA did not comment to Al Jazeera.
What we could not establish
We could not establish whether Infantino intends to stand, whether Montagliani or Sheikh Salman have said anything about running, how many federations have withdrawn support, or the details of the private investment plan. We verified this account from a single publication.
