Scottish FA withdraws support for Infantino's 2027 re-election bid

The Scottish Football Association will not vote for Gianni Infantino when FIFA's member associations elect a president in early 2027, Scottish FA chief executive Ian Maxwell announced on Monday, according to BBC Sport. The move places Scotland alongside the football associations of England, Wales, and the Republic of Ireland in withdrawing support for Infantino's re-election and aligns Scotland with UEFA's 55 member associations, which have threatened a boycott of all FIFA competitions.

Maxwell cited governance failures and lack of transparency as the reason for the withdrawal. "There's obviously been a fall-down in governance, there's been a lack of transparency, there's been a lack of engagement with member associations, and that's something that we need to address," Maxwell stated, per ESPN reporting. He added that administrators should not be the center of public attention following a World Cup: "Something has gone wrong if the focus after the most successful, the most well-supported World Cup has now become off-the-field incidents rather than on the field."

Infantino faces escalating pressure on two distinct fronts. Three confederation presidents accused him of "deception" over his attempt to create FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), a private company to manage FIFA's commercial and ticketing rights across all competitions, with 21 percent to be sold to a private investment firm. That plan was later abandoned. The Press Association understands the letter's authors intended to give Infantino the opportunity to resign with dignity, according to ESPN.

Separately, FairSquare, a non-profit organization campaigning for accountability in sport, has written to FIFA's governance, audit and compliance committee requesting that Infantino be ruled ineligible to run again for the presidency. FIFA statutes set a three-term limit of four years each, for a maximum of 12 years. Infantino replaced Sepp Blatter in 2016 and served until 2019 (when Blatter's term ended), then was elected in 2019 and again in 2023. In 2022, Infantino successfully argued to FIFA's governance committee that his 2016-2019 term should not count toward the three-term limit because it was incomplete, a determination that would make him eligible for a 2027 race.

FairSquare argues this decision violates the statutory purpose of the regulation. "Being president for 15 years clearly breaks the purpose of the regulation," FairSquare stated in its letter to the review committee, per BBC reporting. The group contends the exemption "clearly violates the letter and purpose of the FIFA statutory provision on presidential term limits" and was made "without a clear legal basis, in a non-transparent manner and without any reasoning to support it." FairSquare notes that the advice from the governance committee that prompted the 2022 announcement has never been published.

Miguel Maduro, former chair of FIFA's governance committee, told ESPN the statute's wording runs against Infantino's eligibility: "2027 would be his election for a fourth term of office, and it seems to me that the wording of the provision runs clearly against that. The objective was clearly to limit one person serving as president to a maximum of 12 years, and to avoid presidents staying in office as long as Blatter." However, Infantino's 2022 ruling came from FIFA's own governance structures, an established precedent within the organization's internal review process.

Maxwell rejected the suggestion that the SFA's earlier silence on Infantino was due to Mike Mulraney, the SFA president, heading FIFA's finance committee. An account appearing to belong to Chris Mihm, the current deputy chair of FIFA's governance committee, has reposted FairSquare posts on social media calling for a "reboot" of FIFA and criticizing Infantino over alleged breaches of FIFA rules on political neutrality, though the sources do not provide Mihm's direct public statement on Infantino's eligibility.