It’s time for Fifexit

Last weekend, as the World Cup came to its unspectacular conclusion, Ed Davey made an uncharacteristically sensible suggestion: the FA and UEFA should quit FIFA and build their own global football governing body. Throwing our weight around on the world stage to overrule egalitarian international organisations is positively un-Lib Dem. But given Europe’s supremacy in football this Palmerstonian move would be both feasible and entirely justifiable as a way to protect the future of the game we invented and still dominate.

The 2026 World Cup will be remembered for many things — Spain’s boring football, Argentina’s grubby tactics and an epic Bronze medal match — but perhaps none more so than the intervention of the President in a red card. Whether or not Trump’s call to Infantino contributed to the suspension of the ban of Team USA’s star striker, we do not know. What we can say is that FIFA’s reputation has sunk so low that it is entirely believable. 

The root cause of FIFA’s corruption is simple: it is too democratic. By giving each country an equal vote it ensured its own failure. It was this system that in 1974 enabled the Brazilian businessman João Havelange to wrestle control of the organisation from straight-laced English former referee and grammar schoolmaster Sir Stanley Rous. Havelange realised that securing the votes of African countries was the key to winning the Presidency and travelled the continent greasing palms. He then spent the next two decades, supported by his young side-kick Sepp Blatter, working with the Adidas CEO Horst Dassler to commercialise the game and take a cut on licensing deals.

Blatter finally used his boss’s corruption to force him out and pave the way for his own Presidency in 1998. But he still had to beat Lennart Johansson, a respectable Swede who headed UEFA in the election. Once again he turned to parts of the world with more votes than governance. He promised the Southern Africans the opportunity to host a World Cup, did questionable deals with the Caribbeans (who carry a disproportionate number of votes) and, through his Qatari friends, is alleged to have handed out envelopes of cash.

Eventually, and to Europe’s great embarrassment, it was the Americans who called time. At dawn on 27 May 2015, Swiss police acting on a US indictment swept into the five-star Baur au Lac hotel in Zurich and led seven FIFA grandees out through the service entrance. The Department of Justice charged 14 officials and marketing executives with racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering.

But the rot did not stop there. Infantino, the Swiss-Italian bureaucrat elected in 2016 on a promise to restore FIFA’s good name, has instead continued the Blatter model. Within a year he had purged the independent ethics investigators who brought down his predecessor. He moved his residence to Doha before the Qatar World Cup, at which he memorably declared that he felt Qatari, Arab, African, gay and disabled all at once. Last December, having failed to secure Trump the Nobel Peace Prize by lobbying, he simply invented the “FIFA Peace Prize” and handed it to him at the Kennedy Center. One begins to see why the White House felt a phone call about a red card might be worth making. 

This has had consequences for players and fans. Havelange delivered the 1978 World Cup to General Videla’s Argentina, a junta then busy throwing dissidents out of aircraft. England failed to qualify — on ethical grounds, I presume. Blatter presided over that extraordinary evening in December 2010 when Russia and Qatar were announced as hosts. Both were entirely unsuited on ethical and practical grounds. Infantino has now overseen the award of the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia — “elected” unopposed on a video call, after a bidding process choreographed to exclude any rival. One can only assume that all that stands in the way of a Taliban World Cup is a lack of commercial incentive. And there are already talks of expanding the World Cup to 64 teams — a move that will further degrade the quality but, crucially from FIFA’s perspective, should ensure that the lucrative markets of China, India and Indonesia are brought into play.

Football was invented in Britain and popularised in Europe. The seven founding members of FIFA were all European. 10 of the 13 countries to reach a World Cup final have been European. All the best leagues in the world are all in western Europe, and it is European clubs that develop, employ and pay the players. The reality is FIFA needs Europe far more than Europe needs FIFA: there simply could not be a World Cup without Europe.

None of which is to say that we are better as individuals — Blatter, Platini, Dassler and Infantino are all European men, and the whole racket is headquartered in Zurich. But we do have better systems: independent courts, free newspapers, licensing regimes, the tedious apparatus of accountability. UEFA is also democratic but this works because all members meet the basic levels for accountability and governance. A World Cup run by UEFA would undoubtedly be a better one, and the rest of the world would be invited. There would be no hydration breaks in 40-degree heat, no sportswashing by autocrats and no peace prizes. 

Transitioning to European management would be remarkably straightforward. UEFA already organises the annual Champions League and the four-yearly international European Championship — a tournament that arguably has a higher standard of play. The continent has an abundance of world class stadia, all within a far smaller area than that used in the 2026 World Cup. It also has all the other transport links and infrastructure without having to adapt or construct new facilities. Ticket prices would be reasonable and predictable and the timezone works for the vast majority of football fans around the world. 

South America is the only other continent with a deep footballing pedigree. CONMEBOL, its footballing body, already shares with UEFA a memorandum of understanding, a London office and, in theory, a tournament: the sporadic Finalissima match between the European and South American champions, next scheduled for later this year. It will be a rerun of Argentina vs Spain without the hydration breaks. 

There would be objections, from other countries, from some parts of the political spectrum and, of course, from existing officials who would object to giving up their positions of power. We would be told that it is an act of arrogance or selfishness. There might be hollow threats to boycott. But the objective would be honorable: to preserve and protect rather than to milk football. 

One country, one vote was a system devised by guilt-ridden post-colonials with idealistic notions of global equality

The popularity and performance of national teams across Africa and in parts of East Asia has increased significantly. UEFA would encourage and support this. There could be away fixtures and potentially in future a rotation for tournaments, but this would happen with Europe’s consent rather than via an auction by megalomaniac officials.

One country, one vote was a system devised by guilt-ridden post-colonials with idealistic notions of global equality. Inevitably it leads to corrupt states selling their votes to nefarious actors. Interpol elected an Emirati general accused of torture as president in 2021 and nearly elected a Russian before that. The UN Human Rights Council’s membership elections are a running joke for the same reason. And at the International Whaling Commission Japan gets its way on harpooning minke whales by securing the support of landlocked countries like Mali. 

Trump, for all his faults, has grasped that the old world order is breaking down and has chosen to assert America’s interests without apology. Europe has the muscle to take back control of world football and dictate the terms; it merely lacks the nerve. When even the Lib Dems are calling for pragmatic nationalism it is surely time to act. Less FIFA, more FIFO: fit in or eff off. Only then will football truly have come home.