Gianni Infantino is ineligible to run for a fourth term as FIFA president under the governing body's statutes, the former head of its governance committee said on Tuesday, ahead of an upcoming deadline for election candidacies.
Miguel Maduro, who previously chaired the governance panel, stated that FIFA rules explicitly restrict any individual from serving more than three terms. Infantino, who is pursuing re-election in March 2027, has already been elected three times since first taking office in 2016.
“Article 33, paragraph two of the FIFA statutes is very clear when it says no person may serve as president for more than three terms,” Maduro told reporters on Tuesday. He noted that the rule text makes no distinction between full and partial terms.
Infantino initially took charge of world football's governing body following an Extraordinary Congress triggered by Sepp Blatter's resignation. He served until 2019 before being re-elected twice. Infantino has argued that his first three years should not count toward the term limit because he was completing an interrupted mandate.
In December 2022, the FIFA Council unanimously confirmed that Infantino's 2016 to 2019 period in office would not count as a term, although the legal reasoning behind that decision was never made public.
Maduro, a Portuguese lawyer removed from his FIFA position in 2017 after blocking Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko from a committee seat, argued that checks and balances have eroded. He added that member associations have been hesitant to act independently because of what he described as a “climate of fear”.
Human rights organisation FairSquare has written to 52 member associations urging them to declare Infantino ineligible. Nicholas McGeehan, a director and cofounder at FairSquare, said representatives would meet with Norwegian football officials on Wednesday, noting that Norway's football association previously supported a complaint against Infantino over political neutrality rules.
“Given that the NFF have already engaged the Ethics Committee and the Governance Committee, we are hopeful they will set an example on this case too,” McGeehan said.
Despite the objections, Infantino retains a commanding position across FIFA's 211 voting members, bolstered last month by an endorsement from the head of Asian football. The deadline for submitting candidacies closes in two weeks.
