FIFA's Governance Review Will Be Run by ‘Trusted’ Insiders as Second-Salary Claims Deepen Infantino Crisis
FIFA has agreed to review its governance — but staffed the working group with its own people and confederation members, rejecting calls for independent scrutiny as new revelations emerged of an undeclared $1.72m payment to Gianni Infantino.
Published 18 Oct 20263 min read
FIFA Council Agrees Governance Review — but It Will Be Run by FIFA's Own People
FIFA has committed to a review of its own governance, but the body's Council has stopped short of the independent, externally led examination that confederations and stakeholders have demanded since President Gianni Infantino's collapsed plan to sell a stake in World Cup commercial rights. Instead, the working group established at the October Council meeting will be staffed by confederation members and FIFA staff — the very organisation whose structures it is meant to scrutinise.
The decision is the latest twist in a governance crisis that has run since late July, when news broke of the FIFA Forward Enterprise scheme to sell off commercial rights in the World Cup and other competitions to private investors. That plan was abandoned in August after UEFA, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation publicly questioned the president's position, and the presidents and general secretaries of the AFC, Concacaf and UEFA wrote to Infantino insisting any resulting report must be conducted by an independent third party with no FIFA staff involved.
‘Turkeys don't vote for Christmas’
Critics say the outcome answers the question of who inside FIFA was prepared to champion a root-and-branch external review: not enough Council members. The working group's mandate does include reviewing the powers and role of the FIFA president, but its composition — drawn from confederations and FIFA's own administration — means the review fails the basic test of independence that governance experts apply. In law, the appearance of bias matters; at FIFA, critics argue it is close to the only governance feature on display.
The ‘second salary’ revelation
The Council meeting also convened days after reports, first carried by The Times, that Infantino received a payment of $1.72 million in 2024 from FWC2026, the US-based entity that operated the 2026 World Cup, on top of the $4.2 million salary disclosed in FIFA's accounts. Miguel Maduro, the former chairman of FIFA's governance committee, said that paying additional amounts through companies related to FIFA without public disclosure would be a clear contravention of the federation's rules.
On the disciplinary side, the Council is also considering a change to the code that would prevent a repeat of the Folarin Balogun situation, in which the US striker served no suspension after a red card at the World Cup, with an automatic one-match ban to be written expressly into the regulations.
Pressure still building
The combination of an insider-led review and the salary revelations keeps the pressure on Infantino ahead of the March 2027 presidential election, in which he is standing again. Numerous federation presidents and football stakeholders have told the governing body they have lost all trust in its leadership and that the president must go — a message the Council's compromise is unlikely to quieten.
FIFA has committed to presenting a full report on these events to the FIFA Council — but proper governance would require that such a review be conducted by a fully independent third party, not by FIFA itself, its staff, or by any stakeholder within football.— Confederation presidents and general secretaries, in their August letter to Infantino
For the clubs, leagues and regulators watching from outside, the episode is another reminder that governance reform at world football's governing body still travels at the pace set by those being reformed.