Infantino Cannot Stand for a Fourth Term as FIFA President, Says Former Governance Chief Maduro

Miguel Maduro, the former head of FIFA's governance committee, has said that under the statutes of world football's governing body, Gianni Infantino cannot stand for a fourth term as president in 2027.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Maduro said Article 33, paragraph two of the FIFA statutes is very clear: no person may serve as president for more than three terms.

He said Infantino has been elected three times and has been president for three terms. In his view, there is no way to reconcile another presidency for Infantino with that rule.

Maduro's comments came two weeks before FIFA's deadline for submitting candidacies for the presidential election in March 2027.

The human rights organisation FairSquare has written to member associations urging them to declare him ineligible. FairSquare had previously urged FIFA to rule that Infantino is ineligible to seek another term, arguing he has already served the maximum three terms permitted under the statutes.

Infantino successfully argued that his first spell in charge, when he was elected at an Extraordinary Congress in 2016 following Sepp Blatter's resignation, should not count towards that limit because it completed an interrupted mandate.

In December 2022, the FIFA Council unanimously confirmed that the period between 2016 and 2019 does not count as a term of office for Infantino. FairSquare said the reasoning behind that decision had never been made public.

Maduro is a Portuguese lawyer who was removed from his post at FIFA in 2017 after he blocked Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko from being re-elected to its top committee.

He added that the wording of the rule makes no distinction between complete and incomplete terms — it talks about three terms, whether they are four-year terms or shorter ones.

Infantino's re-election prospects were strengthened significantly last month after the head of Asian football endorsed his bid, and support across confederations gives him a commanding position among FIFA's 211 voting members.

Maduro said FIFA's governance framework is unable to hold its president accountable, especially when he stands to benefit from rule interpretations, arguing that existing checks and balances on presidential power have failed.

FairSquare said it had contacted 52 member associations and although no one has yet responded to the call, its director and co-founder Nicholas McGeehan told the Reuters news agency that they will be meeting Norwegian football officials on Wednesday.

Norway's football association has previously backed FairSquare's official complaint against Infantino over a breach of political neutrality rules. McGeehan said they are hopeful Norway will set an example on this case too, but that other associations also need to step up.

Maduro said member associations have been reluctant to act independently because of what he described as a climate of fear.