Gianni Infantino and the Self-Dissection Letter: FIFA Rewrites Its Own Rulebook Before the Vote

On October 15, a letter left FIFA headquarters in Zurich. It was not sent to a newsroom, nor to a press conference. It went straight to the inboxes of 211 national football associations and every member of the FIFA Council. The signature: Gianni Infantino. According to reporting by The Athletic and others, the letter reads less like an administrative notice and more like an invitation to self-dissection. Infantino wants the FIFA Council, at its October 15 meeting, to commission an independent assessment of the organisation's current governance structure. He wants dialogue with member associations and other stakeholders on possible improvements. Those talks must cover the role of the FIFA president, the FIFA Council and the FIFA Congress. He also wants greater transparency and more input in major decisions. Pressure has mounted on the FIFA president for months. At the centre is the controversial FIFA Forward Enterprise plan. Under the proposal, FIFA wanted to sell 20 per cent of its commercial and organisational activities to external investors for around $4.2 billion. FIFA ultimately withdrew the plan before it could be formally presented to the FIFA Council and member associations. Infantino stresses it was only a proposal and that no final decision was ever taken. Even so, the row left a mark. For Infantino, it made one thing clear: big plans can only succeed if the decision-making process commands sufficient trust. "Big ideas must be developed, tested and communicated through clear and reliable institutions," he wrote. Despite the criticism, despite trust already withdrawn, Infantino plans to stand again in March. Right now, he is the only candidate. Other candidates have until November 18 to put themselves forward. To understand why this letter matters, rewind. The FIFA Infantino inherited in 2026 was a ruin of reputation. Sepp Blatter left office amid the biggest corruption storm in sporting history, with dozens of officials indicted in the United States and Switzerland. Infantino arrived as a reformer, promising a more transparent, leaner FIFA closer to grassroots football. A decade later, the story is different. FIFA expanded the World Cup from 32 to 48 teams, took the tournament into new markets and, most importantly for small associations, distributed more money than ever through FIFA Forward. Per FIFA's own published documents, Forward 3.0 for 2026-2026 is committed at around $2.8 billion, nearly double the $1.5 billion of the previous cycle. Money is the answer, and the question. Precisely because FIFA holds such resources, the structure that decides who benefits, who is shut out and who has a voice matters more than any scoreline. That is why the October 15 letter deserves to be read as a political document rather than an administrative one. Infantino proposes an independent assessment of governance, and dialogue on the roles of three institutions: the president, the Council and the Congress. Those three share power very unequally, and any real reform must touch that imbalance. The FIFA Congress is where 211 member associations, one vote each, elect the president and approve major statute changes. In theory, that is where ultimate power rests with the associations. In practice, Congress meets once a year, for a few hours, with a pre-prepared agenda and little real room for open debate. The FIFA Council, with roughly thirty-seven members, is the executive body between congresses. This is where commercial, technical and organisational decisions are actually passed. And the FIFA president, with the permanent machinery in Zurich, controls information, personnel and scheduling. Three institutions, one current of power flowing in a pre-determined direction. Over my career writing about football, based on my experience watching matches across many countries, I learned something about how institutions work. A club can change its manager, its captain, its formation, but if the dressing room keeps its old habits, the season ends exactly where it began. Reforming an organisation is not about renaming meeting rooms; it is about changing who signs the decisions and who is allowed to question them. I saw this at a much smaller scale. In March 2026, when global football stopped for the pandemic, I followed a semi-professional club in the Merseyside region. The stadium was empty, no crowd, no shouting. Young players feared losing contracts, the board feared losing revenue, and all they had was a decision-making structure none of them sat at. How an organisation treats its weakest members in a crisis is its true nature. FIFA is not a semi-professional club. But the logic holds. When an organisation distributes billions of dollars, the question is no longer who is better, but who has the right to say no, and to whom. There is another reading, and I think it is necessary. Infantino's call for transparency arrives precisely as he prepares to stand again. An independent assessment launched by his own hand can become a tool to declare that he listened, corrected course and returned power to the associations. In an election where he is the only candidate, controlling the reform narrative matters as much as delivering it. An independent assessment is only credible if the person commissioning it does not also control its scope, budget and deadline. If the FIFA Council, whose majority is elevated by the president and regional confederations, drafts the terms, the word "independent" is merely decorative. That is the biggest blind spot of any institutional reform: controlled self-examination is easily mistaken for genuine self-examination. Historically, FIFA is no stranger to self-reform. After the 2026 scandal, it created a reform committee, changed statutes, limited presidential terms and separated the roles of Council and secretariat. Those changes were real, yet they did not stop a president from re-accumulating power within a decade. Institutional reform always moves slower than personal ambition, and personal ambition always knows how to wear institutional clothing. The FIFA Forward Enterprise story reveals this mechanism clearly. The plan to sell 20 per cent of commercial and organisational activities for around $4.2 billion was framed as a financial boost. It also meant part of FIFA's future control would belong to investors with no vote at Congress and no accountability to any member association. Had it gone through, world football's power structure would have changed permanently, and irreversibly. A quiet summer does not announce collapse; it only clears the road for it. Forward Enterprise was prepared in silence, discussed in silence, and only when it surfaced did associations learn they had nearly lost part of their shared assets. The opposition came late, but it was strong enough to force withdrawal. That moment was when Infantino understood he could not keep running FIFA like a private company. But stopping there would fall into the trap this trade always sets: turning every event into a chapter of collapse. The strategist of collapse sees geological signs everywhere, yet sometimes a sign is just a sign. Infantino's letter may be a political move, and it may also be a genuine moment of recognition. The two are not mutually exclusive. Notably, the letter never mentions limiting the president's own power. He proposes clarifying the roles of president, Council and Congress, but does not say the president should have less power. That is a deliberate gap, and the gap says more than the words. For small associations that receive FIFA Forward money and rely on it to survive, this debate is not abstract. An association in Oceania or Africa may have an annual budget smaller than a week's wages of a Premier League player. For them, who controls that flow is a matter of survival, not a governance seminar topic. Other candidates have until November 18. If nobody registers, the March election becomes a formality. In football, a match with only one team on the pitch is no longer a match. And an institutional democracy with only one candidate is no longer a choice. I have sat in newsrooms that no longer exist, to write about matches that never age. And I learned that football's decisive moments rarely happen on the pitch. They happen in thick-carpeted rooms, with warm light and cold coffee, where one person writes a letter and two hundred and eleven others must decide whether to believe. Every dynasty has an unnoticed minute of leaving the field; the attentive will record it. For FIFA, that moment may not be an arrest, a verdict or a vote. It may simply be a letter on October 15, sent to the very people who once handed Infantino power, asking a simple question: do you want to rewrite the rules with me? Every name has its own breath. Moscow taught me that every name has its own breath; to mispronounce it is to strangle a soul. I remember that whenever I write the name of a player, a club, a city. Now I must write the name of an institution. FIFA is not a dead name. It is a living body, with breath, with arteries, with dark zones that media light only touches when someone opens a door. This letter is a promise to open the door. Whether it truly opens, or is only cracked enough for people to believe change is happening inside, depends on who holds the key after March. Reform is not measured by a letter, but by what remains after the letter is filed away. If by March FIFA still has only one candidate, and the independent assessment still has no terms, no author, no deadline, we will know the answer. The ball rolls through time, but the memory of a derby night rolls through the heart. So does the football of those two hundred and eleven associations. It does not need a saviour. It needs an inbox that stays open, and someone humble enough to read the reply.