European anger against Gianni Infantino keeps widening, and the calls for his departure from the FIFA presidency grow louder by the week. Yet the calculations inside the international federation tell a different story. The numbers simply are not there to remove him. Any path towards his ousting runs into a wall of 106 votes that, for now, looks out of reach.
Ladislao Moñino, a journalist at Spain's "Cadena SER" radio, revealed that removing Gianni Infantino from the presidency of the International Federation of Association Football has become almost impossible mathematically, despite the widening circle of opposition against him within UEFA.
Writing in the newspaper "El País" in an article titled "The difficult task of removing Infantino", Moñino argued that "the only possibility at present for the Italian-Swiss president not to remain at the head of FIFA is his resignation and his withdrawal from standing for a fourth term in the elections scheduled to take place on 18 March 2027". He reaffirmed that position during his appearance on the "El Larguero" programme with Álvaro Benito.
There is a clear European vision against Infantino, Moñino explained, and public opinion stands against him too after the series of controversial events that preceded and occurred during the World Cup. But he stressed one blunt truth: "public opinion does not vote".
Infantino took a heavy blow when UEFA and the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football "CONCACAF" withdrew their support. Even so, that opposition was not complete. Some federations within CONCACAF still back the current president, which explains why the numbers do not add up.
The biggest numerical obstacle facing any attempt to oust Infantino came next. "106 votes are needed to remove him and to call an extraordinary congress," Moñino said, a quorum his opponents do not yet possess.
UEFA and its president Aleksander Čeferin hold "strong interest" in removing him from the FIFA presidency, Moñino indicated. But he made another point at the same time: if the votes were there, UEFA would already have begun taking action and putting forward a candidate capable of defeating him at any extraordinary congress convened to push him towards resignation.
Attention now turns to the UEFA congress scheduled for early next year to elect the president, an event likely to see Čeferin re-elected. Then comes the FIFA Congress in Rabat, Morocco, with questions swirling over how far this conflict will bleed into the landscape surrounding the upcoming World Cup after all the controversy stirred up.