Six Nordic Federations Join Revolt Against Infantino, Demand Guarantees on FIFA Governance

Six more federations are joining the revolt. This time the blow comes from northern Europe: Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland and the Faroe Islands issued a joint statement saying something that until recently seemed unthinkable in world soccer: that they no longer trust Gianni Infantino.

The statement, released this Sunday, doesn't mince words. The six Nordic associations say they "view with great concern the governance and decision making at the highest level" of FIFA. And they don't stop there: they announce their support for UEFA and the measures already proposed by the European body, in what is starting to look like an increasingly broad front against the president of world soccer.

The spark that lit all this? A plan by Infantino to sell future World Cup revenue to private investors. The idea, known as the FIFA Forward Enterprise proposal, landed like a bucket of cold water within soccer's own ecosystem. It wasn't only UEFA that came out against it: the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and Concacaf, the body representing North America, Central America and the Caribbean, did too.

Guarantees in writing

The Nordic federations aren't just asking for the plan to be shelved. They're going further and demanding long term certainty. In their statement, they say: "We expect FIFA to provide binding guarantees that the governance of the organization or its competitions will never again be opened to private ownership."

They're also joining the demand already made by the AFC, Concacaf and UEFA for an independent external investigation into everything surrounding that proposal. And they're asking for something even more fundamental: a complete, independent review of FIFA's governance framework, to check whether the institution is still upholding the principles of "independence, checks and balances, transparency and accountability" that the reform program FIFA itself adopted in 2016 was supposed to guarantee.

That detail is no accident. That reform program was born after one of the worst corruption scandals in the organization's history, precisely to prevent power from concentrating again without oversight. That six European federations are now mentioning it explicitly makes clear where the discontent is aimed: not just at the privatization plan itself, but at the way the decision was made.

The pressure on Infantino keeps growing week by week. What began as scattered criticism from Europe has turned into an increasingly widespread challenge, with entire confederations and now a bloc of national associations effectively demanding he be held accountable. FIFA's president has not yet publicly responded to this latest statement.