Norway Tells Infantino To Resign As Support For FIFA President Splits World Football

Pressure is mounting on FIFA president Gianni Infantino after Norway became the first national football association to openly call for his resignation following the collapse of his plan to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors.

The Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) took a stronger stance than the football associations of England, Wales, Croatia and Albania, which have all withdrawn their support for Infantino but stopped short of demanding he step down.

NFF president Lise Klaveness said the FIFA chief no longer had the confidence needed to lead world football through the current crisis.

“He [Infantino] does not have the institutional trust required to govern Fifa stably in the times we are in,” Klaveness said on Friday.

“There is no going back for Gianni Infantino. The international football cooperation is very much in trouble, and we must have a reason to get together now, and we want to ask the Fifa president to resign now.

“We will see which other countries eventually join in, if that becomes the strategy from the Uefa board. We are not going to ask for an extraordinary [Uefa board] meeting, we will ask him to resign in our dialogue with Fifa.”

Klaveness also revisited concerns the Norwegian FA has repeatedly raised with Fifa over the past four years. They include the process for awarding tournaments, the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize presented to United States President Donald Trump in December and the decision to overturn American forward Folarin Balogun’s World Cup suspension after a phone call from Trump.

FIFA has yet to comment on Norway’s latest remarks.

While opposition to Infantino continues to grow across Europe, Naija News reports that he has received fresh backing from Mexico and Argentina.

The Mexican Football Federation broke away from the position adopted by Concacaf, which had earlier called for a “comprehensive reckoning” of Infantino’s presidency after the failed investment proposal.

Instead, Mexico reaffirmed its confidence in the Fifa president.

“The FMF [Mexican FA] supports president Infantino’s leadership in continuing to promote the development of football through institutional strengthening,” the federation said.

Mexico also aligned itself with South American governing body Conmebol, insisting any attempt to remove Infantino should only happen through a vote involving all 211 Fifa member associations.

Even so, Conmebol expressed reservations about recent developments, saying it was concerned by “the repeated unilateral actions taken without resorting to dialogue or the institutional mechanisms provided for dealing with this type of situation”.

Argentina also defended Infantino, praising him for acknowledging and apologising for his “errors”. Its football association described his decade in charge of Fifa as one “centred on the development of soccer worldwide and institutional strength based on a clear, stable, and transparent governance model”.

The latest developments showed the widening divide within global football. Infantino continues to enjoy unanimous support from the Confederation of African Football, while UEFA and CONCACAF remain among his strongest critics.

Uefa has already declared it no longer has confidence in Infantino, branding the proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise project a “shabby, back room, opaque deal”. The English FA, alongside Wales, Croatia and Albania, has formally withdrawn its support.

CONCACAF accused the FIFA president of putting forward “a symptom of leadership that has stopped putting football first”, adding that “this recent unilateral and egregious act of poor governance and leadership follows a pattern of missteps and similar behaviour”.

Although CONCACAF stopped short of withdrawing confidence in Infantino, Uefa has warned that a boycott of the World Cup by European nations remains a possibility despite the proposal being abandoned.

Before Infantino withdrew the plan, the Asian Football Confederation had also declared it stood “in solidarity” with UEFA and CONCACAF in opposing the proposal.