Infantino, Manchester City, and FIFA Presidency: Why Arsene Wenger?

Simon Jordan, asked on talkSPORT who should stand against Gianni Infantino in the March vote, did not hesitate when he said, “Stand against him Ceferin, or someone like that. Or Wenger.”

Aleksander Ceferin had already told his own room it was time to say enough, then ruled himself out of the job. FIFA confirmed on 6 September that Infantino is still running, the vote is on 18 March 2027 in Rabat, and a name needs five member associations by 18 November. Names like Victor Montagliani, Dariusz Mioduski, and Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, have been floated. But Arsene Wenger, who has worked with FIFA since 2019, also fits on that list.

Rui Pinto, the Football Leaks whistleblower, speaking on the Manchester City files, claims that back in 2014 Infantino, then UEFA general secretary, already knew of irregularities involving the club, shared confidential documents, and did what he could to keep both City and PSG to a fine instead of a deeper investigation that might have brought a Champions League ban. Pinto’s line, in his own words, is that Infantino has become a ‘cancer’ on football and should have no place in the future of the game. You do not need to have the whole verdict, which we explained may not come as you think, to see the point he is making. The man now asking for another four years is the same man who sat over that file, and City’s case has only become worse since. And for that, a presidency argument in 2026 cannot pretend the old paperwork is someone else’s problem.

Wenger’s answer to the newer paperwork is already on the record. When Infantino’s FIFA Forward Enterprise plan, a stake in future World Cups pitched around $20 billion, with $20 million waved at each of the 211 associations, came apart in August, the Chief of Global Football Development said he had not been in the room and had first read it in the papers. Dropping it, he wrote, was ‘absolutely necessary,’ because he believes in an independent FIFA that serves the game with commitment, transparency and integrity. 

Mattias Grafström, the secretary general, emailed staff to call the week sad and reproachable. The French Football Federation, which had been in support of Infantino, pulled its support for the re-election. Debbie Hewitt, chair of the English FA and a FIFA vice president, wants the investor file and the papers on Folarin Balogun’s World Cup red card before the council meets in Zurich on 15 October, so the pressure is now coming from his own staff and from a vice president, not only from a radio studio.

The others in the conversation are all political in a way Wenger is not. Montagliani runs Concacaf, so a run from him is just like one region’s grievance with Zurich. Ceferin called for enough and then stayed in Nyon, which leaves the complaint without a candidate. Mioduski owns Legia Warsaw and would be a UEFA pick. Salman runs the Asian confederation and has his own argument with Infantino about how decisions are made.

A fair objection would be that Arsene Wenger has never counted 106 votes. But the Frenchman also does not come in as anyone’s employee. He was hired by Infantino in 2019 and still published the piece that killed the sell-off. Federation presidents notice that more than they admit.

Not to mention that the seven years in the job also say as much as the August letter. The semi-automated offside he pushed through, the move to five substitutes, and the long argument about fewer stoppages all came from a coach who spent 22 years at Arsenal watching attacks die on a linesman’s flag, after he had already won the French title with Monaco in 1988 and spent a season with Nagoya Grampus Eight in Japan. He grew up in Strasbourg, studied economics in the university, and people still call him the professor because he will sit and explain a law before he asks anyone to vote for it.

That same brief is what he is out with this month. The first U-15 World Cup, which he has overseen as Chief of Global Football Development, is an 8v8 tournament in Azerbaijan from 24 to 30 October, open to every member association no matter how small, with the girls’ edition to follow in 2027. He called it a dream to have everybody in the world together, and that is the kind of week a smaller federation can take home and show its own congress, which matters when 106 of 211 votes are enough to win.

Infantino has said he has never been more determined to do what is right for the game, and Samuel Eto’o, the Cameroon great who now runs his country’s federation, has said the current president brought the most to Africa, which is why a simple majority is still there for him if the Gulf stays loyal and a slice of Concacaf peels away from Victor Montagliani.

The question Jordan asked on talkSPORT is simpler than that, because it comes down to who already knows the staff, already refused the sell-off in writing, and is not carrying a confederation’s bill into the congress in Rabat. Wenger has not said he will run, yet the City file, the August statement and a radio host have all put his name in the same sentence as the job, so why not?