The Red Card Football Can Show Infantino

FIFA has just shown that a red card can be made to vanish. Days after President Trump called FIFA President Gianni Infantino to ask for a review, FIFA’s disciplinary committee suspended the automatic ban on Folarin Balogun, the American striker sent off in a World Cup knockout match. The committee cited Article 27 of its disciplinary code and gave no reasons. UEFA, European football’s governing body, expressed “disbelief”. Belgium found it had no standing to appeal a decision about its own opponent. The ruling has opened a Pandora’s box. Egypt, eliminated by Argentina after a goal was disallowed on review, now demands the “equal application of the laws of the game”. When rules visibly bend for one member, every member learns to ask why they do not bend for them. The Financial Times has asked whether a Rubicon has been crossed and Europe’s football associations have been muttering about their options. Muttering is not a strategy, and it is not necessary. The remedy is already in their hands.

FIFA is not a monarchy. It is a Swiss association, and its constitution reads like a company’s. The congress of 211 member associations, one member and one vote, is the shareholders’ meeting. The council is the board. The general secretariat is, in FIFA’s own words, the executive. The statutes cast the president as a non-executive chairman, outside the executive. In practice he exerts control without ownership, through the power to set agendas.

Here is the detail that should worry him. Article 35(4) of the statutes, in full:

“The President chairs the Congress and meetings of the Council. The President shall have no right to vote at the Congress and shall have one ordinary vote on the Council.”

No vote at the congress. Not even a casting vote at the council. Were a dismissal motion tabled, the statutes would seat him in the chair, gavelling along his own defenestration.

The mechanism is short. Under FIFA’s statutes, the council must convene an extraordinary congress if one fifth of the member associations demand one in writing. One fifth of 211 is 43. UEFA alone has 55 members. The requisitioning associations set the agenda, that agenda cannot be altered, and the meeting must be held within three months. Should a council chaired by the incumbent simply sit on the request, the law supplies the answer. The one fifth rule is mandatory, and if FIFA’s own bodies stall, a Swiss court can order the meeting convened.

Once the congress meets, the dismissal power is plain. FIFA’s statutes give it to the congress, and Swiss association law says the same. Where there is good cause, the power exists by operation of law. The president’s contract may carry severance or other termination protections. That can affect the price, but it cannot block the removal. Nor can the president lobby his way out. The FIFA statutes exist by grace of Swiss association law, and the only escape would be to persuade Switzerland to amend that law, presumably with a helpful call from Washington. This time, of course, it would be the FIFA president calling the US president. But Swiss legislation moves through consultation, two chambers of parliament, and a referendum window of one hundred days; even a willing government could not manage it inside the three months the requisition clock allows.

How many votes would it take? FIFA’s drafters wrote elaborate supermajorities for electing a president and no special rule for firing one. The statutory default therefore applies: a simple majority of the valid votes cast, abstentions disregarded. One more detail deserves attention. Under the congress’s standing orders, elections are held by secret ballot, but ordinary votes are not. For votes, the secret ballot is expressly prohibited. A dismissal motion is a vote, so it would not be private. Every association’s position would be known inside the room, and a roll call, which any 15 associations may request, would make it attributable outside the room too. Because the majority is counted on votes cast, every association that stays at home, or sits on its hands, lowers the bar the dissident members must clear.

That leaves the hard part, which is not law but political economy. Forty three signatures call the meeting. They do not win it. Carrying the motion would mean persuading associations that have long benefited from the incumbent’s development largesse to break ranks. A vote taken in the open changes the price of loyalty. Some federations may still decide the patronage is worth the reputational cost. Others may not. The favours a president can bestow are finite. The cost of being seen to defend him, in this moment, may not be.

It is worth recalling where this story began. The sale of congress votes is the offence that produced the 2015 indictments and the reform programme the incumbent himself once championed.

The symmetry is exact. FIFA has just shown that any red card its referees produce can be suspended by a committee, without reasons. The congress red card is different. It is the one sanction in world football that no disciplinary committee can rescind, because it is written into a law FIFA does not control. The referee’s decision, for once, would be final. Whether football’s member associations have the nerve to show the red card, the next months will tell.

Marco Becht is Professor of Corporate Governance at the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Université libre de Bruxelles. Luca Enriques is Professor of Business Law at Bocconi University. Both are fellows of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).

This is a cross-post of the authors’ Substack post from 9 July 2026: marcobecht.substack.com/p/the-red-card-football-can-show-infantino. https://open.substack.com/pub/lucaenriques/p/the-red-card-football-can-show-infantino

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