Most soccer fans know FIFA is in charge of world soccer, but what does that really mean? How does FIFA function and why does it matter to the average soccer fan?
Soccer is a representative democracy
Blame it on the French who founded FIFA and took cues from the Olympic movement. Soccer is about one country, one vote. Though there are instances where the older, established countries have more influence, FIFA operates with equality in mind. One country, one vote regardless of the size of the country or its soccer playing ability.
In FIFA’s view of the world, Barbados has the same vote as Brazil. There are 211 official member countries that make up the FIFA Congress. Each of them has a vote and they elect the president and the members of the FIFA Council, formerly known as the Executive Committee. The FIFA Congress meets once a year in what’s called an “ordinary session,” while “extraordinary sessions” can also be scheduled and have occurred every year for the past quarter-century or so.
FIFA COUNCIL
The real power lies with the FIFA Council. That is a group of 37 people who hold the real power within FIFA. It includes the one president, elected by the FIFA Congress, eight vice presidents, and 28 other members elected by the member associations, each for a term of four years. A minimum of one female representative must be elected per confederation. The president and the members of the Council may serve for no more than three terms of office, whether consecutive or not.
Unlike the Congress, the membership is weighted based on the strength of the confederation. FIFA divides the world among six confederations. UEFA, representing Europe, has three vice-presidents and six Council members. Concacaf, the USA’s confederation, has one vice-president and four members. That’s the same as CONMEBOL, home of Brazil, Argentina, and the rest of South America, but it’s worth remembering CONMEBOL only has 10 member countries and is the smallest of the six confederations in that sense. The Asian Football Confederation is represented by one vice-president and six members, as is the Confederation of African Football, while the Oceania Football Confederation has one vice-president and two members on the Council.
Owing to their status as the countries where soccer got its start, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland get to elect their own vice-president. Great Britain isn’t a nation, according to FIFA, so its member countries each get a vote and also form the International Football Association Board. The IFAB is the only body that can change the Laws of the Game, the rules of soccer.
FIFA’s President
The president is elected by the Congress, who vote every four years in the FIFA Congress the year after the men’s World Cup. There have only been 8 FIFA presidents. How does someone get elected FIFA president? The normal way is to spend considerable time moving up the ranks in FIFA’s multi-level bureaucracy. The current FIFA president is Gianni Infantino, who was elected in 2016 and reelected in 2019 and 2023.
According to FIFA’s statutes, the president supervises, casts deciding votes when needed in the Executive Committee, and presides over Congress. Primarily he implements “the decisions passed by the Congress and the Executive Committee through the general secretariat.”
The World Cup
FIFA produces the World Cups and other worldwide tournaments like the Under-17 and Under-20 World Cups and the futsal and beach soccer World Cups. This is the important part for soccer fans. It’s FIFA that determines the method to select World Cup hosts, picks the host, and runs the World Cup.
The proposal for a 2026 World Cup in North America jointly hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada defeated Morocco’s bid in a vote held on June 13, 2018 at the 68th FIFA Congress in Moscow, gaining 134 votes to Morocco’s 65. 2026 will mark the first edition of the expanded, 48-team World Cup, and that enlarged size and scope has further complicated the hosting rights process, which has also featured a recurring commitment to rotate the event evenly across the six member confederations.
On October 4, 2023, FIFA awarded the 2030 World Cup to the joint bid of Spain, Portugal, and Morocco, albeit with a carve-out of the first three matches being held in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay in a nod to the 100-year anniversary of the first World Cup, held in Uruguay in 1930. That decision was made by the FIFA Council, “subject to the completion of a successful bidding process conducted by FIFA and a decision by the FIFA Congress in 2024,” in the words of their official statement.
Other FIFA Tournaments
- U-20 World Cup, men’s and women’s editions
- U-17 World Cup, men’s and women’s editions (formerly the World Youth Championship)
- Club World Cup (FIFA’s design for a club version of the World Cup;. Often perceived to be treated like an obligation by the biggest teams in the world). An expanded 32-team edition will be hosted by the United States in 2025.
- Futsal World Cup
- Beach Soccer World Cup
FIFA Facts
- The organization’s headquarters are in Zurich, Switzerland, though FIFA in 2023 moved more than 100 jobs, including its entire legal department and the audit, compliance and risk management teams, to Miami in advance of the North American 2026 World Cup.
• FIFA dates from May 21, 1904. It expanded to include its first non-European country when South Africa joined six years later.
• It awards player of the year titles. The men’s version is currently called The Best FIFA Men’s Player, an honor previously known as the FIFA Ballon d’Or (2010-2015) and the FIFA World Player of the Year (1991-2009), and the women’s version is called The Best FIFA Women’s Player, previously known as the FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year award (2001-15).
• Former US Soccer president Sunil Gulati served on the FIFA Executive Committee and FIFA Council from 2013-2021.
• Another former USSF president, Carlos Cordeiro, currently serves as a senior advisor to the FIFA president on “Global Strategy and Governance.”
