Gianni Infantino’s most bitter rival: Meet UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin – the Slovenian lawyer taking on FIFA’s plan to sell the World Cup

As football’s elite gathered in the hospitality seating at the MetLife Stadium in New York to watch Spain take on Argentina in this month’s World Cup final, one FIFA luminary was conspicuous in his absence. 

Aleksander Ceferin holds the position of vice president of football’s international governing body as well as that of president of UEFA. But rather than watch the tie and see one of his own federations lift the trophy, the Slovenian executive pointedly snubbed the event – reportedly over FIFA’s controversial decision to suspend US star Folarin Balogun’s red card. 

In the wake of Balogun’s seemingly Donald Trump-influenced amnesty, UEFA said that FIFA’s decision to defer his one-match ban had ‘crossed a red line’. Less than a month later, FIFA president Gianni Infantino has sailed over another. 

Since the revelation of the leaked proposal to sell £3.1billion-worth of shares in FIFA’s tournaments to an investor group led by the brother of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Infantino has attracted widespread condemnation. 

But few voices were as forthright in their disapproval as Ceferin’s UEFA, whose European members voted on Thursday to boycott FIFA tournaments in opposition to the proposal, a move since taken up by the Asian Football Confederation and CONCACAF. 

This is not Ceferin’s first battle against Infantino’s FIFA, however, with the pair increasingly at loggerheads over the direction of international football. The two men have a checkered recent past that has at times seen Ceferin appear actively defiant of FIFA’s age of expansion under the scheming Swiss-Italian.

Ceferin’s background in sports law, which he began practising following his graduation from the University of Ljubljana, eventually saw him step into his first position in sports administration as the head of the Slovenian Football Association. 

In a quirk of fate, both Ceferin and Infantino ascended to their current roles in 2016. The duo had previously worked together at UEFA in the early 2010s, when Infantino held the role of Secretary General and Ceferin of second and third vice-chairman of its Legal Committee. 

Their mutual history, however, has not appeared to breed a warm and friendly relationship.  

UEFA’s disapproval of how FIFA had handled Balogun’s red card – which they described as an ‘unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable’ act – was far from the governing body’s only disapproval with this year’s World Cup. 

As FIFA weathered terrible publicity for their lack of action as Trump’s administration barred FIFA-approved referee, the Somalian Omar Artan, from entering the country, UEFA joined the pile-on in style. 

Artan, UEFA announced, would be welcomed to officiate their Super Cup final between Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain and Europa League winners Aston Villa in August. The appointment will be the highest-profile of the 34-year-old’s career. 

As much as the gesture was a sympathetic one of goodwill after Artan was unable to become the first-ever Somali referee at a World Cup, UEFA might have enjoyed the opportunity for some point-scoring over FIFA, who were accused of abandoning their values to roll over for Trump’s. 

Under Ceferin, UEFA also disagreed with some of FIFA’s regulation changes brought in for this year’s World Cup, including the use of mandatory ‘hydration breaks’ to provide more airtime for advertising. 

UEFA have confirmed that hydration breaks will not be present at the 2028 European Championships, nor will their referees be sanctioning players who cover their mouth when speaking to their rivals as FIFA did in June and July.   

The organisation also staunchly opposed plans to expand the World Cup even more than the 48 teams who played in 2026’s overstuffed edition. 

In April, Ceferin called the idea of having 64 teams play in the 2030 iteration a ‘bad’ one and admitted that Infantino’s proposal on the matter had been ‘maybe even more surprising for me’ than for fans. 

Relations between the two have been on a knife’s edge for some time, with Ceferin thought to have been particularly incensed by Infantino’s conduct during FIFA’s annual Congress last May. 

Infantino arrived more than two hours late for the meeting after accompanying Trump on a diplomatic tour of the Middle East. During a break in proceedings, Ceferin led a walkout of some European FIFA member association representatives and accused Infantino of putting ‘private political interests’ ahead of football governance. 

Naturally, Infantino rebuffed this.  

 ‘As president of FIFA my responsibility is to make decisions in the interests of the organization,’ Infantino said. ‘I felt that I needed to be there to represent football and all of you.’

Ceferin subsequently boycotted this year’s Congress.  

Significant fractures appeared with FIFA’s relaunch of the Club World Cup tournament, expanded and given additional sheen in the form of a bumper £84m payday for eventual winners Chelsea and a Tiffany and Co-designed trophy. 

The new-look Club World Cup was viewed as an existential threat to UEFA’s own flagship competition, the Champions League, and as early as 2018, Ceferin went on the attack. 

Then, the plans were rolled into suggestions of a rolling Nations League tournament with a new mini-World Cup every second October, and Ceferin accused Infantino of ‘selling the soul of football’ in an early harbinger of this most recent FIFA controversy. 

‘As long as I am UEFA president there will be no room for pursuing selfish endeavours or hiding behind false pretences,’ Ceferin said. ‘I cannot accept that some people who are blinded by the pursuit of profit are considering to sell the soul of football tournaments to nebulous private funds.

‘Money does not rule – and the European sports model must be respected. Football is not for sale. I will not let anyone sacrifice its structures on the altar of a highly cynical and ruthless mercantilism.’

When the Club World Cup did eventually come to pass, elongating an already stuffed 2024-25 season, Ceferin was more sanguine, but warned of the dangers of overplaying stars. 

‘The calendar is oversaturated,’ he says. ‘So much so that we can no longer add new matches. And I agree with that. 

‘But the situation is paradoxical. On one side, clubs strive for financial sustainability and need more games to generate profit. On the other side, players are overloaded and getting injured.’

But Ceferin’s crusades have not begun and ended with FIFA. 

In 2021, Ceferin led the charge against the bombshell breakaway European Super League (ESL), which saw nine top clubs including Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United announce their plans for a new tournament on the eve of a UEFA Executive Committee meeting to discuss revamping the Champions League. 

While universally reviled by fans for its inherent lack of competitiveness and closed-shop ‘permanent member’ format, Ceferin was a particularly vocal opponent. Not least because he had been personally deceived by founders including Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli – whose daughter he counts as one of his godchildren. 

Ceferin immediately sought to ban the clubs from their competitions as the two sides waged legal war against one another, with a UEFA statement calling the new tournament ‘a spit in the face of football lovers and of society as a whole’. 

‘Our game has become the greatest sport in the world based on open competition, integrity and sporting merit,’ The firebrand statement continued, hours after the announcement. ‘We cannot and will not allow that to change. Never, ever. 

‘We urge everyone from the millions of football lovers around the world, the world’s media, politicians and football’s governing bodies to stand tall with us, as we do everything in our power to ensure this never ends up in fruition.’ 

So determined was Ceferin to bar the league from getting off the ground that he suggested that players at the clubs involved would be banned from competing for their relevant countries at the upcoming Euro 2020. 

But knowing when to play nice, the Slovenian welcomed those clubs who promptly withdrew against the backdrop of fan protest in the streets with open arms. 

Ceferin later compared the experience to his time in the army, when he was called up to fight in the Slovenian Territorial Army during their war of independence as Yugoslavia collapsed in 1991. 

‘It finished very soon, in 10 days, but there was a lot of tension – day and night – and threats and bombs,’ Ceferin told AP of the war in an interview shortly after crushing the ESL. ‘It’s an experience that helps you to survive if some people then try to destabilize you.’ 

‘Psychologically, (the announcement) was such a shock for me. Similar to the war. You cannot compare, but both were stressful – the tension was similar.’

But, he added: ‘Spoiled children cannot destabilise me.’ 

Ceferin may be keen to posit himself as an avenging angel in the face of forces determined to sell football to the highest bidder, but his own background is not entirely stainless. 

An investigation by independent outlet Josimar in 2017 alleged that he had lacked the credentials necessary for his appointment as head of the Slovenian FA, as he did not have the mandatory minimum five years of football boardroom experience. In that election, he ran unopposed, after his would-be rival Tugo Frajman withdrew and offered Ceferin’s ‘dirty campaigning’ as his reason for doing so. 

In the lengths Infantino has gone to conceal his controversial proposal and attempt to force FIFA’s member associations to fall in line, the president has shown he has no interest in playing by the rules. Perhaps the fact that his most bitter rival is no angel could mean that Infantino has met his match.