European football leaders confident of finding candidate to stand against Infantino

European football leaders are growing more confident that someone will challenge Gianni Infantino in next year’s Fifa presidential election. One European association head told the Guardian they were “positive” an opponent will emerge by March, and senior Uefa and national association figures agree, ahead of Thursday’s key Fifa council meeting.

Uefa, Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation have said they’ll oppose Infantino’s re-election following the World Cup sell-off scandal. But they haven’t yet agreed on a credible contender, with the nomination deadline set for 18 November. Their presidents (Ceferin, Montagliani and Sheikh Salman) have all declined to run, and talk of Arsène Wenger or Michele Kang stepping up has been shut down. Former Portugal player Luis Figo, who was the first ex-player to urge Infantino to quit in August, has been floated, though he’s also seen as a possible future Uefa president once Ceferin’s last term ends in 2031.

Sources close to the anti-Infantino camp insist progress is being made. They say the eventual candidate will hold off declaring publicly until just before the deadline, giving Fifa less time to block the nomination. The rebels believe Fifa’s institutional machinery is being used to back Infantino’s campaign.

At Thursday’s meeting, the 37-member council is expected to press Infantino on several issues: the scrapped Fifa Forward Enterprise plan, the Fifa peace prize, and the Folarin Balogun case, in which the disciplinary committee overturned the US striker’s World Cup suspension. That ruling came after intervention from Donald Trump, the first recipient of the Fifa peace prize. To get ahead of the criticism, Infantino has proposed removing the committee’s power to revoke one-match bans following a straight red card. He has also promised a full report on the Enterprise plan, though unusually it wasn’t circulated to members beforehand.