Victor Montagliani eyes re-election at Concacaf that would rule out Fifa presidency run

Concacaf president Victor Montagliani has clarified his intentions to staff at the confederation after he was touted as a potential rival to Gianni Infantino at Fifa

Victor Montagliani has told Concacaf staff he intends to stand for re-election as the confederation’s presidentnext year, which will rule him out of going up against Gianni Infantino for the top job at Fifa.

The Canadian businessman is understood to have relayed the message to most of the 41 members of Concacaf, the North and Central American and Caribbean confederation.

Montagliani has been widely touted as a potential candidate to take on Infantino for the Fifa presidency, particularly among Uefa member associations, who are conscious a European candidate would have no chance of beating Infantino in a ballot of Fifa’s 211 members.

At a town hall meeting of Concacaf staff late last month, however, Montagliani is understood to have said that despite the Fifa governance crisis and calls for him to stand, he wants to continue serving members in the region.

Concacaf’s presidential election will take place in the first quarter of next year before the Fifa vote on 18 March in Rabat, with the similar timelines leading Montagliani to clarify his intentions to staff.

The 61-year-old was elected president on a reforming mandate 10 years ago after the corruption scandal that culminated in the arrest of then Concacaf president, Jeffrey Webb, after an FBI investigation. Webb admitted he had taken “bribes and kickbacks”.

Uefa will also hold presidential elections next year, with Aleksander Ceferin confirming his intention to stand at a meeting of Uefa’s 55 member associations in Berlin on Thursday. Ceferin had said in February 2024 that he would not run for a fourth term at the helm but the likelihood that he would, after all, continue had long been an open secret. Previously, changes to the Uefa statutes had been passed that meant his first term, which began midway through the standard four-year cycle, did not count towards the standard three-term limit.

It raises the prospect of Ceferin, who took the presidency in September 2016, holding power for more than 15 years in total. That is seen among most European FAs as a positive amid the turmoil engulfing football’s governance while putting to bed any perception that Ceferin, who would have had a number of proponents, might be tempted to challenge Infantino for the Fifa role

Montagliani and Ceferin are expected to continue working together to bring about governance reform at Fifa after the World Cup sell-off scandal, which will be on the agenda at next Thursday’s Fifa council meeting in Zurich.

Fifa’s council has not met since Infantino’s Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) plan was exposed in July despite repeated calls from members for an extraordinary general meeting, with the summit their first meeting since Fifa congress in Vancouver last March.

Montagliani, Ceferin and the Asian Football Confederation president, Salman bin Ibrahim al-Khalifa, are expected to use the council meeting to demand an independent review of FFE and call for broader governance reforms of Fifa, which would give a greater voice to stakeholders and formalise the council’s role in decision-making.

Previous calls from the trio, expressed in letters sent to Infantino last month, for Fifa to allocate a portion of its $6bn (£4.5bn) cash reserves to members will also be discussed.

Delegates at Uefa’s Berlin meeting discussed a framework for Fifa reform, whose key points were made public during the afternoon. Among the points listed were the need for “a president who leads, not manages”, “stronger ethics, disciplinary, audit and compliance”, and “a clear process for major decisions”.

Azerbaijan was an outlier in refusing to back Uefa’s reform proposals. The Azeri FA’s former general secretary, Elkhan Mammadov, now plays a key role at Fifa as its chief member associations officer and has been instrumental in Infantino’s attempts to keep wavering nations onside during the FFE crisis. Later this month, Azerbaijan will hold the first Fifa Under-15 World Cup, whose contestants will include Russia.