In the spring of 2015, the image of handcuffed football officials in Zurich’s Baur au Lac hotel became a global symbol of institutional rot. The dramatic intervention by Swiss and U.S. authorities into FIFA’s operations exposed a network of alleged bribery, racketeering, and opaque financial flows that stretched across decades.
Publicly humiliated and legally cornered, FIFA pledged a “new era” of governance, announcing comprehensive reforms designed to centralize ethics, professionalism, and transparency. A year later, Gianni Infantino, a former UEFA administrator, was elected president amid promises to restore the organisation’s credibility and refocus it on the development of the sport.
Today, a decade after those arrests, the central question is no longer whether FIFA needed reform, but whether the reforms have altered the underlying power structures or merely reshaped their public presentation. Inside FIFA’s own communications, the organisation describes itself as a transformed institution: leaner, more transparent, and better governed than in 2015.
External critics, including human rights groups, club associations, academics, and fan organisations, argue instead that FIFA is
“arguably more poorly governed today than a decade ago,”
pointing to recurring patterns of centralized power, selective enforcement, and opaque financial relationships. This tension between the official narrative and independent assessments forms the heart of the ongoing debate about FIFA’s direction and legitimacy.
The Reform Narrative vs Present‑Day Reality
Shortly after the 2015 upheaval, FIFA rolled out a series of internal changes: new compliance departments, revised bidding rules for World Cups, independent ethics and audit structures, and a push toward greater financial transparency through annual reports and external audits.
The organisation highlighted these measures in its corporate‑governance documents, noting strengthened risk‑management systems, whistleblower protections, and the redistribution of billions of dollars to member associations as evidence of “good governance.” Supporters of the reform agenda argue that the number of open investigations and formal ethics procedures today is materially higher than in the pre‑2015 era, suggesting a more robust internal enforcement regime.
Yet those same supporters are outnumbered by critics who emphasise what remains unchanged. A 2025 open letter coordinated by human‑rights group FairSquare, signed by NGOs, lawyers, academics, and supporter organisations, contends that the core governance model has not shifted: power remains concentrated in the executive branch, decision‑making continues to be opaque, and accountability mechanisms are weakened by political interference.
The letter notes that while FIFA redistributes large sums to member associations, there is little verifiable evidence that these funds are primarily used to develop grassroots football or strengthen local governance, rather than to secure political loyalty. Other analyses describe a “patronage model” in which financial transfers and tournament allocations are deployed to buy the political support of smaller federations, thereby discouraging internal scrutiny of leadership.
The gap between rhetoric and practice is particularly evident in how FIFA handles high‑profile hosts and high‑value events. Reforms introduced after 2015 emphasised “human rights due diligence” and “sustainable development” as criteria for World Cup bids, but human‑rights groups argue that key decisions—such as awarding future tournaments to countries with documented systemic abuses—appear to prioritise political and commercial interests over the stated ethical standards.
FIFA’s own annual and ethics reports, while more voluminous and detailed than before, do not resolve the underlying question: whether the organisation’s internal processes meaningfully constrain its leadership or whether they serve largely as a layer of procedural formality shielding entrenched power.
Leadership Symbolism and Public Image
Throughout the past decade, FIFA’s leadership has cultivated a carefully curated public image: cosmopolitan, technocratic, and globally connected. Gianni Infantino in particular has been portrayed as a modernising figure, fluent in multiple languages, regularly travelling to all six confederations, and presenting himself as a bridge between the global villages of football and the corridors of international diplomacy. Behind this image, however, lie more contested questions about the symbolism of leadership choices—particularly around lifestyle, visibility, and access.
Investigative reporting in The Times has documented Infantino’s frequent use of private aviation, including flights linked to specific tournaments and political engagements, sometimes at a cost that critics describe as disproportionate given the organisation’s professed fiscal discipline. Such choices are not illegal in themselves, but they raise concerns about the message they send about FIFA’s values and priorities.
When a governing body that redistributes billions of dollars still chooses to rely heavily on high‑end private transport for its president, observers question whether the organisation truly operates under the same budgetary constraints as the national associations it claims to uplift. These details, when pieced together with broader travel patterns and media scheduling, suggest a leadership style that emphasises proximity to power and visibility in global arenas more than operational restraint.
Another layer of symbolism lies in how FIFA’s leadership presents itself to the global football community. Infantino and his inner circle have cultivated a narrative of “inclusivity” and “solidarity,” often appearing at grassroots events, youth tournaments, and women’s football initiatives. The organisation’s marketing materials foreground these gestures, reinforcing the idea that FIFA’s leadership is in touch with the everyday realities of players and fans.
However, critics argue that these images can function as a form of image management: they highlight visible, photogenic moments while downplaying the concentration of decision‑making authority and the limited influence member associations actually wield over core policies. The contrast between the symbolism of outreach and the substance of governance remains one of the most persistent fault lines in public perceptions of FIFA’s leadership.
Relationships With Wealthy States and Political Power
One of the most consequential shifts in FIFA’s posture over the past decade has been its increasing alignment with wealthy states and their geopolitical agendas. In the mid‑2010s, the organisation still bore the stigma of the 2015 scandal, and its leadership sought to demonstrate that it could operate in a more transparent and accountable manner.
By the early 2020s, however, FIFA had become a regular presence in high‑level diplomatic forums, with its president frequently invited to summits, state dinners, and multilateral events. These appearances are often framed as efforts to “diplomatise” football, using the sport as a neutral platform for dialogue and soft power.
Yet this diplomatic embrace also entails risks. Human‑rights and governance groups have pointed out that FIFA’s leadership has cultivated close relationships with leaders of countries with questionable records on civil liberties, labour rights, and political transparency.
Critics argue that these relationships can create a subtle but powerful incentive structure: hosts that are politically aligned with FIFA’s leadership are more likely to be favoured in sensitive decisions, from tournament allocations to arbitration outcomes, while those that are more critical face greater friction. This is not an allegation of specific, provable deals, but rather an observation about the broader pattern of access and alignment.
When FIFA’s leadership regularly appears alongside certain political figures while maintaining a more distant relationship with others, it raises questions about the true independence of the organisation’s decision‑making.
The financial dimension of these relationships is equally significant. In recent years, FIFA has pursued commercial partnerships and sponsorship deals that tie large tournament revenues to specific national governments or state‑linked entities.
Such arrangements bring scale and stability to the organisation’s finances, but they also deepen its dependence on a small set of powerful stakeholders. Critics argue that this dependence can subtly influence how FIFA sets its agenda, prioritises tournaments, and approaches issues such as human‑rights due diligence. When a governing body that redistributes billions of dollars to member associations is itself financially reliant on a handful of state‑linked partners, the risk of implicit trade‑offs between revenue and governance becomes harder to ignore.
Governance, Transparency, and Concentration of Authority
At the institutional level, FIFA’s governance reforms after 2015 looked on paper like a decisive break with the past. The organisation introduced term limits for leaders, restructured ethics and audit bodies, and committed to more regular reporting and better oversight. FIFA’s annual and ethics reports now contain granular statistics on investigations, hearings, and sanctions, and the organisation’s website dedicates entire sections to corporate‑governance structures and compliance frameworks.
These developments are often cited as evidence of progress, and they do represent a move away from the almost entirely opaque environment that characterised the late‑Blatter era.
However, several independent assessments argue that this formal progress has not translated into a meaningful rebalancing of power. The 2025 open letter coordinated by FairSquare highlights what it describes as a “deeply problematic power imbalance” between FIFA’s executive branch and its member associations, noting that the Council and the presidency retain overwhelming control over key decisions, including tournament allocation, calendar changes, and major commercial partnerships.
The letter also raises concerns about “selective enforcement” of FIFA’s own statutes, suggesting that rules are applied with greater rigour to smaller or less influential actors while being relaxed or sidestepped for powerful confederations or national federations.
Transparency, in particular, emerges as a contested terrain. FIFA now publishes more documents, more data, and more reports than it did a decade ago, but critics argue that the most consequential decisions—such as how World Cup hosts are rewarded strategically, how funds flow between FIFA and its commercial partners, and how leadership travel is financed—are often outlined in summaries rather than in the kind of granular, independently auditable detail that would allow genuine scrutiny.
Some governance experts note that while FIFA’s internal divisions—Compliance, Financial Governance, Internal Audit—have grown, their independence is periodically called into question when senior leaders are insulated from meaningful consequences for high‑profile controversies. This pattern reinforces the perception that governance reforms have added layers of procedure without altering the underlying culture of centralised discretion.
What This Means for the Future of Global Football
The decade following the 2015 scandal has left global football in a state of uneasy ambiguity. On the surface, FIFA appears more professional, more structured, and more responsive to calls for transparency than it did in the Blatter era.
The organisation now operates under a more visible framework of ethics cases, financial audits, and development‑funding programmes, and its public‑relations apparatus has grown considerably. At the same time, critical voices argue that the sport’s governing body is structurally unfit to oversee global football without external pressure or deeper institutional overhaul.
One of the most significant implications of this tension is the way it shapes the expectations of fans, clubs, and national associations. When FIFA continues to promote narratives of “reform” and “new era” leadership while simultaneously expanding its alignment with wealthy states and high‑profile political figures, stakeholders are left to weigh symbolism against substance.
The expansion of tournaments, the commercialisation of club calendars, and the concentration of decision‑making power in Zurich and its regional hubs all suggest that FIFA’s strategic direction is still driven more by revenue and political convenience than by a clear, democratically accountable mandate.
For the future of global football, the central unresolved question is whether FIFA can genuinely decentralise authority and embed transparent, enforceable checks on its leadership, or whether it will continue to rely on image‑management and procedural formalism to maintain its dominance.
Independent researchers and advocacy groups argue that genuine reform would require stronger external oversight, clearer separation between FIFA’s executive and its commercial partners, and more robust mechanisms for member associations and civil society to hold the organisation accountable.
Until those structural changes are convincingly demonstrated, the contrast between FIFA’s promised reform and the present‑day realities of power, money, and symbolism will remain a defining feature of the sport’s global governance.