UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has said that he has no interest in running for FIFA president but said that the current incumbent Gianni Infantino must realise that he no longer has enough support or will be beaten by another candidate during the election. Infantino thus far remains the only candidate in the election, scheduled to be held in March next year, and Ceferin says that there will be a candidate running against him.

“There are two options,” he told “The Rest Is Politics: Leading” podcast. “One option is that he realises that he doesn’t have the support, and that’s not only a political support of the ones who vote, but the political support of football community, the political support of fans, the political support of the players, former players, coaches. And the second option that he goes to the elections in March, but in that case, I think he will have a candidate against him. I don’t know yet who.”

Infantino was initially expected to be re-elected as FIFA president unopposed even amid a wave of criticism that came for his conduct before and during the 2026 World Cup. However, Infantino has experienced a spectacular collapse in fortunes since it emerged that he had planned to sell stakes in profits that will be made from future World Cups to private entities, led by Joshua Kushner, brother of US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.

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The development was followed by widespread backlash from the football community, with UEFA, the continental federation for Europe, even threatening to boycott future World Cups. FIFA eventually announced that it was dropping the plan but Infantino has continued to receive criticism in the months since.

On Sunday, six Nordic FIFA members — Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the Faroe Islands — met in Helsinki and issued a joint statement backing calls for ?Infantino’s resignation.

In his podcast interview, ?Ceferin rejected allegations that Europe was obstructing efforts to help poorer football nations and took aim at what he described as attempts to portray UEFA as an entitled elite. “What I hear is that they play on, you know, arrogant Europe is ?against us,” he said. “But I think someone should remind him (Infantino) that he is a European, and that he was supported by UEFA, which he forgot.”