FIFA Council

• 1. Introduction

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  The FIFA Council is the body that decides when the World Cup is held, who hosts it, and what form it takes. Every four years, billions of people around the world watch football's biggest tournament unfold, and the shape of that event is determined not by fans or players, but by a council of 37 people whose names most supporters would not recognise. They set the vision for football at a global level, choosing dates, locations, and formats for tournaments. They appoint FIFA's delegates to the rule-making body that governs the laws of the game. They can hire and dismiss the Secretary General. Yet for much of its history, this institution operated under a different name and a very different reputation. How did a body charged with overseeing the world's most popular sport become the focal point of one of sport's biggest corruption scandals? And how did FIFA try to remake that body into something new?

• 2. From ExCo to Council

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  The 2016 FIFA Extraordinary Congress changed the formal structure of how FIFA governs itself. The old FIFA Executive Committee, known widely as the ExCo, was replaced by a new institution called the FIFA Council, with an updated structure and, on paper, more power distributed across the organisation. The ExCo met for the final time on the 18th of March 2016. New statutes came into force later that year, and the new council's membership took effect on the 30th of September 2016. The change arrived before the 2016 Ordinary FIFA Congress, giving the reformed body time to establish itself under the new rules. The council is explicitly described as a non-executive, supervisory and strategic institution rather than a management body. Its job is to set FIFA's direction and oversee the organisation, while day-to-day operations run through separate staff structures. The Secretary General now reports to the council and works alongside a Chief Compliance Officer, a role created to monitor the organisation's conduct.

• 3. Who Sits on the Council

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  Gianni Infantino holds the presidency and leads the FIFA Council. Below him, six confederations each send vice-presidents and members in proportions set by the statutes. UEFA sends three vice-presidents and six members, making it the largest bloc from any single confederation. AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, and CONMEBOL each send one vice-president, with their member counts varying by confederation. OFC, representing Oceania, sends one vice-president and two members, the smallest delegation. In total, 37 members sit on the council. The council is elected not by a popular vote among football clubs or fans, but by the FIFA Congress itself. All members must pass an integrity check before they can take their seats. Vice-presidents and regular members are checked by their own confederations, while the President and members of judicial bodies face scrutiny from the investigatory chamber of the FIFA Ethics Committee. A fresh integrity check is also required before any member can be re-elected.

• 4. Rules of the Old Committee

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  Under the former Executive Committee structure, a president was elected by Congress in the year following a FIFA World Cup. Eight vice-presidents and fifteen members were appointed through the confederations and associations. One female member was elected directly by Congress. In 2013 and again in 2014, Congress co-opted two additional women into the committee for one-year periods. Each term ran four years, and members could be reappointed for another four-year period by their confederations and reinstalled by Congress. Between 1947 and 2013, one vice-presidential seat was officially reserved for a candidate from one of the British associations. FIFA removed that guaranteed position in 2013, though UEFA informally continued to nominate British candidates for any vacancies that arose. The casting vote rule gave the President a tie-breaking vote when the committee was evenly split, though in all other votes the President held just one vote like every other member.

• 5. Corruption at the Top

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  In November 2010, two Executive Committee members were banned after a sting operation run by The Sunday Times. Reynald Temarii was banned for one year and fined 5,000 Swiss Francs for breaching FIFA's code of confidentiality. Amos Adamu received a three-year ban and a fine of 10,000 Swiss Francs after being found to have tried to sell his vote for hosting the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups. Their removal cut the ExCo's voting pool for the December host-nation decision from 24 members to 22, and dropped the winning threshold from 13 votes to 12. On the 25th of May 2011, ExCo member Chuck Blazer reported Mohammed bin Hammam and Jack Warner to the FIFA Ethics Committee. Blazer alleged they had offered bribes to members of the Caribbean Football Union at a meeting on the 10th and the 11th of May. Bin Hammam then implicated Sepp Blatter, claiming Blatter had known about the alleged cash payments. Bin Hammam withdrew from the June 2011 presidential election, FIFA suspended both him and Warner, and Blatter stood unopposed, winning with 186 of 203 votes. On the 27th of May 2015, fourteen senior football officials, including ExCo members, were arrested in Switzerland on corruption charges. Among those facing extradition to the United States were executives Webb, Warner, Figueredo, Eduardo Li, Julio Rocha, Costas Takkas, Rafael Esquivel, José Maria Marin, and Nicolás Leoz.

• 6. Blatter's Final Days

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  David Gill, newly elected as British FIFA Vice-president and an executive committee board member, threatened to resign if Sepp Blatter won a fifth term as FIFA President. Blatter was re-elected, and Gill immediately turned down the position, stating he would not serve under a Blatter regime. Four days after the election, Blatter abruptly announced he was stepping down. Gill then said he would reconsider his decision to quit, noting he had not yet formally resigned at the point the announcement came. Separately, FIFA senior vice-president Julio Grondona gave an interview to German press on the 31st of May 2011, offering a stark explanation of how he had cast his own vote for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup hosts. Grondona stated that he voted for Qatar because a vote for the United States would be, in his words, like a vote for England, which he said was not possible. He added that he had told England's bidders directly: if they returned the Falkland Islands, they would receive his vote. The council that emerged from this period of crisis carries within its founding the weight of those events.