It was a mere formality, and it was settled in a matter of minutes. Gianni Infantino was re-elected until 2027 to the presidency of Fifa, which he has held since 2016, without competitor and by acclamation at the 73rd Congress of the body in Kigali (Rwanda) on Thursday.

The 52-year-old leader had already been reappointed under the same conditions in 2019 by the delegates of the 211 member federations. He could extend his reign at the helm of world football until 2031, with his first three-year lease, which began after Sepp Blatter's suspension, considered incomplete.

Dubious comparison

After his famous speech at the introduction of the last World Cup in Qatar, where he said he "felt today Qatari, Arab, African, homosexual, disabled, migrant worker", Infantino again made a strong contribution at the opening of the congress by comparing his unexpected election in 2016 with the way Rwanda had rebuilt itself after the genocide of 1994.

Not far from giving up as he was not a favorite, the former secretary general of the body "then remembered [his] visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial," he said. "I asked myself why I should be discouraged. The way in which this country has recovered from this tragedy should inspire us all. So I continued the campaign, and was elected president of FIFA a few months later. Someone must have told him that this was a good idea.


Gianni #Infantino vergleicht indirekt seinen Weg zur #FIFA-Präsidentschaft mit dem Weg von Ruanda nach dem dortigen Genozid. Nur weil er das Denkmal dafür besucht habe, habe er 2016 seinen Wahlkampf fortgesetzt. Komplett wild schon wieder. #FIFACongress pic.twitter.com/RDFBaA5DFY

— Maximilian Rieger (@mjrieger) March 16, 2023

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Strengthened by this re-election, Gianni Infantino intends to inaugurate an era of all superlatives, inflating competitions and returns with his World Cup to 104 games from 2026 and his Club World Cup to 32 teams from the summer of 2025. The first project is approved, the second should be soon, with the objective of competing with the lucrative UEFA Champions League.

This race to expand could well awaken the fractures of football: Wednesday evening the World League Forum (WLF), bringing together about forty championships, denounced decisions "without consultation", which further burden "an already overloaded calendar, and take no account of the impact on the competitiveness of domestic leagues and the health of players".

  • Football
  • FIFA
  • Gianni Infantino
  • Sport