Japan's Kozo Tashima needs five FIFA members by 18 November to challenge Infantino.

What happened

The Japan Football Association’s honorary president, Kozo Tashima, has announced that he will stand against Gianni Infantino in FIFA’s presidential election in March. Nominations close on 18 November.

Kozo Tashima said on 5 November that he will run for FIFA president. Tashima, 68, led the Japan Football Association from 2016 to 2024 and sits on the FIFA Council. He said he stands “with the full support of the Japan Football Association”. The vote is at the FIFA Congress in Rabat, Morocco, on 18 March 2027, where Gianni Infantino wants a fourth term.

A candidate needs five of FIFA’s 211 member associations. Nominations close on 18 November. Tashima is the second person to say he will run, after Ramon Vega, a former Tottenham defender who has worked in finance since 2004.

BBC Sport reported on 6 November that Vega says he has “more than five” but would not name them, and that he failed to get five on three earlier tries. The Guardian wrote that Tashima “will have no problem in securing the nominations”. A candidate must also prove an “active role” in football for two of the last five years, and Vega says he meets this as a shareholder of a club.

Infantino has faced strong criticism since a failed plan this summer to sell a 20% share in FIFA’s commercial rights. UEFA, the European football body, has led the opposition, and The Guardian says Tashima is understood to have its blessing. In October the Asian Football Confederation, Tashima’s own region, backed Infantino. The Guardian and Sky Sports put the number needed to win at 106.

On 3 November Miguel Maduro, former head of FIFA’s governance committee, said FIFA’s rules do not allow Infantino a fourth term. FIFA’s council decided in 2022 that his first years, from 2016 to 2019, do not count as a term.

FIFA’s member associations have proposed, in due time and form, the following candidate for the presidential election (...) Mr Gianni Infantino (incumbent FIFA President). No other candidature has been submitted.

FIFA media release, 17 November 2022, the day after nominations closed for the 2023 vote

Sources: The Guardian (2), Al Jazeera (2, 3), BBC (2, 3), Sky Sports, ESPN

The Pattern

We looked for cases where a sitting FIFA president ran for a new term, and asked how many rivals made FIFA’s official list of candidates once nominations closed. We found seven such races from 1974 to 2023. Since 2013 a rival has needed five member associations behind them. Before that, one was enough.

The Read

Every rival who made the list since 2002 had a football body behind them, such as Issa Hayatou, head of African football, in 2002, or Prince Ali, put forward by England’s Football Association in 2015. Of the four who did not make it, no association put forward the journalist Grant Wahl in 2011, Jérôme Champagne in 2015 found three of the five he needed, and David Ginola in 2015 and Ramon Vega in 2019 did not get five. Tashima has Japan’s association behind him. No association has been named behind Vega, and BBC Sport describes Tashima as “the first serious challenger”. Sky Sports wrote that UEFA is expected to back Tashima if he is the only rival.

There are reasons for doubt. Four of the seven races were under Sepp Blatter, and only 2015, 2019 and 2023 came after the rule of five associations began in 2013. João Havelange led FIFA from 1974 to 1998, and The Guardian wrote in 2002 that Issa Hayatou would be the first challenger to a sitting president in 28 years. The list may also come later than the day after nominations close. In 2015 FIFA published it 11 days after nominations closed, once its integrity checks were done. In 2022 the list came before those checks, so the rule on an active role may not decide who is named by 30 November.

Sources: The Guardian (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), BBC, Al Jazeera, BBC, Sky Sports, FIFA, ESPN