Football’s global governing body Fifa is structurally broken and cannot be fixed from within, according to ethics professor Thomas Beschorner of the University of St Gallen.
The recently concluded World Cup may have delivered thrilling football on the pitch, but Fifa’s conduct off it once again drew widespread condemnation from across the sport.
Multiple ethical violations during the tournament were described as merely the visible surface of far deeper and more serious problems within the organisation.
Fifa’s Swiss president Gianni Infantino faces accusations of abuse of office in connection with a campaign for his re-election, adding to the mounting pressure on the body’s leadership.
Further controversy has erupted over Fifa’s plan to commercialise the World Cup by selling shares in a company managing the tournament to a group of private investors.
Beschorner identifies two possible responses to the crisis, which he frames as a yellow card and a red card option respectively.
The yellow card approach involves pushing for fundamental internal reforms, but Beschorner argues this is unrealistic because Fifa’s failures are structural rather than isolated incidents.
Power within Fifa is heavily concentrated, and its governance structures offer little room for the checks and balances needed to align strategic decisions with ethical ones.
Ethics commissions inside the organisation have functioned as largely ceremonial bodies, and critical voices deemed unwelcome have, in some cases, simply been removed.
The red card option is more radical: abolish Fifa entirely and replace it with a new world football association built on stronger foundations of accountability and transparency.
Beschorner notes this is practically achievable, since Fifa is an association of national football associations, each of which can terminate its membership and join another body.
He raises the scenario of powerful European associations, or the full Uefa bloc alongside nations such as Argentina, Brazil, and Japan, withdrawing from Fifa to establish a rival organisation.
What was once a hypothetical thought experiment is now becoming a question of real political pressure, with Uefa, Concacaf, and the Asian Football Confederation standing together against Fifa’s commercial proposals.
The coalition of opposition extends beyond football confederations to include the Council of Europe and its Secretary General, former Swiss minister Alain Berset.
The Swiss Football Association is also reportedly examining whether it wishes to continue backing Infantino’s candidacy for re-election, signalling cracks in his domestic support base.
Senior adviser Carlos Cordeiro resigned in protest, further illustrating how broadly the backlash against Fifa’s current direction has spread.
Uefa delivered one of the most direct public rebukes of the entire affair, stating: “None of us owns football. It is not for Fifa to sell it.”
Beschorner argues that without decisive action now, football’s governing crisis will simply repeat itself when the next World Cup cycle arrives in four years’ time.
His conclusion is clear: meaningful reform of Fifa is not a realistic prospect, and the sport’s long-term integrity depends on building something new from the ground up.