Gianni Infantino, the current president of FIFA, will run unopposed for a third term as the organization’s head in 2019, FIFA announced on Thursday.
Infantino will be the lone candidate when the vote is held on March 16 at the 73rd FIFA Congress in Kigali, Rwanda, according to a brief statement from FIFA.
The announcement read, “No other candidature has been presented.”
Following in the footsteps of past FIFA presidents Joao Havelange, who served from 1974 to 1998, and Sepp Blatter, who served from 1998 to 2015, Infantino’s third term is expected to be successful.
After the federation was dogged by scandal in the later years of Blatter’s presidency, Infantino was elected in 2016 on a platform of “restoring FIFA’s image.”
Infantino’s reelection will not have the support of the German Football Federation (DFB), which said this on Wednesday.
Infantino had expressed his desire to show “deeper consideration for human rights and more devotion to humanitarian causes,” according to DFB president Bernd Neuendorf.
Neuendorf has been a vocal backer of rights groups’ requests that FIFA establish a fund to compensate migrant workers who construct World Cup venues.
Infantino may highlight the increase in FIFA’s revenue during his tenure as president; the governing organization anticipates revenue of $7 billion for the four-year cycle through 2022.
But several of his suggestions for changing club football, such as one to increase the Club World Cup to 24 teams, haven’t been well embraced.
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