Infantino, the FIFA reform letter, and the arithmetic of 211 votes before March 2026

On 22 September 2026 in Berlin, German Football Association (DFB) President Bernd Neuendorf called FIFA President Gianni Infantino's letter to all 211 member associations "a transparent ploy to secure his re-election next year." The letter had been sent a day earlier, on 21 September 2026, and Reuters published its contents.

Skim it and you see a reform document. Read it closely and you see a campaign document dressed in governance language. Of everything Reuters quoted, the line that stopped me longest sits near the end: Infantino insists member associations' positions on proposals or governance matters will not affect how FIFA treats them, and that development and solidarity programmes will continue under existing rules.

Someone who does not control the money would not need to write that sentence. Having to promise that a vote will not be punished tells you people already believed it could be. From that anchor, the letter is best read as a balance sheet of power.

It started with a commercial proposal. During 2026 FIFA pursued a plan to sell 20 per cent of a new entity holding the commercial rights to FIFA competitions, the World Cup among them, to private investors.

The backlash was fast and organised. UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and CONCACAF all opposed it, threatening to boycott FIFA competitions. The confederations said they had not been consulted at any stage and that Infantino acted alone. UEFA declared it had lost faith in the sitting president and demanded a change of leadership. The plan was shelved in July 2026.

By mid-September 2026 Infantino changed tone. He proposed an independent review of FIFA's decision-making process and said he would consult confederations, member associations and other stakeholders on strengthening it.

The timing matters: the FIFA Congress that elects the president takes place in March 2026. Sources close to the discussions told Reuters in September 2026 that Infantino still had enough votes to win, pushing opponents to shift from unseating him to curbing his powers.

For Vietnam, this story is not in Zurich. The Vietnam Football Federation (VFF) is one of 211 member associations, meaning it holds exactly one vote out of 211. The AFC, of which the VFF is a member, is one of the three confederations that signed the call for a change of FIFA leadership.

Before arguing about who is right, the letter needs splitting into two layers. The first is the reform content: an independent review of the decision-making process. The second is the campaign mechanism: who receives the letter, when it is sent, and the no-retaliation clause. The second layer is the decisive one.

Why that clause matters so much. Because FIFA distributes money directly to member associations through its development programme. Under FIFA's published Forward 3.0 terms for the 2026 to 2026 cycle, each member association can access up to USD 8 million.

Multiply USD 8 million by 211 members and you land at roughly USD 1.688 billion per four-year cycle. That is the scale of the cash flow a single FIFA Congress vote can influence. For an association whose annual operating budget runs to a few million dollars, that money is not administrative detail; it is the entire survival of youth development, pitches and a national league.

The second resource is tournament slots. The 2026 World Cup expands to 48 teams and 104 matches, running from 11 June to 19 July 2026 in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Asia receives eight direct slots plus one intercontinental play-off place for the first time. The FIFA president does not decide that number alone, but he heavily shapes how the allocation mechanism operates and is interpreted.

Put differently, Infantino's letter moved the subject from who owns FIFA's commercial rights to how FIFA makes decisions. Shifting from a question about assets to a question about procedure favours the incumbent, because the incumbent always has the advantage of defining procedure. Assets can be counted, valued and taken to court. Procedure is murkier, slower, and always needs someone to chair it.

That is why the key question about the independent review is not whether it happens, but who writes the terms of reference, who pays, who selects the review panel, and who receives the final report first. Every debate has a layer of data nobody has turned over, and here that layer is the terms of reference.

The electoral arithmetic belongs on the table at the same time. FIFA has 211 member associations and the winner needs a majority of valid votes. Reuters sources say Infantino already has that number. His two biggest opponents in Europe cannot find a candidate strong enough to run. A demand for a change of leadership with nobody to replace him becomes a slogan without a mechanism.

Here my habit of tracking matches helps in an unexpected way. Across several V-League seasons I logged the numbers of teams claiming to build a possession game, then checked them against long-ball share and turnovers in their own half. The gap between the claim and the operating data is always where the truth lives, and it does not depend on whether the speaker is sincere. Coaches usually believe what they say; the data only records what the team does.

Players make moments, systems make players. A president produces a statement, but the power structure produces the vote. Change the operator and keep the structure, and three years later someone else sits in the same chair facing the same crisis.

At this point I have to separate the argument from the proof, because I can be wrong on both.

First possibility of error: Bernd Neuendorf is not a neutral observer. He sits on the FIFA Council, the organisation's main decision-making body, and he chairs the member association of UEFA. Calling the letter a ploy is itself a calculated political act. Europe holds a large bloc of votes and most of the broadcast money; a centralised FIFA threatens them, and European opposition does not automatically make Europe right.

Second possibility of error: the independent review has real substance. Written seriously, its terms of reference would deliver a reform small associations have demanded for years. Reform from inside often travels further than reform from outside, because the initiator still holds the power to implement it. Conversely, a FIFA whose credibility collapses could put at risk the entire development pipeline small federations live on.

Third possibility of error, and the one I remind myself of most often: in 2026 I wrote that Germany went out of the World Cup for lack of a real striker. Re-reading the data later, my diagnosis was wrong even though the result was right. Being wrong at the 2026 World Cup taught me more than being right all season. On this letter, Infantino may well be re-elected and the opposition may well be right about the substance — those two facts do not exclude each other.

One more thing needs saying plainly: small associations in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean have their own reasons for not wanting a long power war. For them, a stable FIFA that disburses on time has more practical value than a competitive election. That view is not cowardice; it simply ranks priorities differently from UEFA.

If you want to know whether this letter is real reform or electioneering, three things are verifiable before March 2026. First, whether the independent review's terms of reference are published before December 2026, and whether they name an external auditor. Second, whether UEFA fields a candidate before the nomination deadline. Third, whether the AFC shifts position after its own congress, because the VFF vote sits inside that bloc.

Football does not need you to believe it; it needs you to verify it. And over the next eighteen months, the only publicly verifiable thing remains those three questions, not the tone of anyone in that room.