The Norwegian FA will ask Gianni Infantino to resign with immediate effect after his doomed attempt to sell stakes in the World Cup to private investors. Norway is the first federation to call directly for the Fifa president to step down after a series of controversies that came to a head with the current crisis surrounding his Fifa Forward Enterprise scheme.
The decision was made in a meeting of the Norwegian Football Federation (NFF) on Thursday night. Norway has consistently taken a lead in efforts to scrutinise Fifa’s governance and recent events have taken any faith in its leadership beyond the point of no return.
“We decided that there is no trust in Infantino now,” the NFF president, Lise Klaveness, told the Guardian. “We have been worried consistently and there has been one more step in worrying direction every year, every part of the year. The trust is now gone for us, there is no way back for Infantino.
“We’re left in a very polarised cooperation globally and, I would say, chaos. So we will ask him to resign immediately so that the global football community can look ahead and cooperate going into the future.”
The NFF is expected to formally write a letter requesting Infantino’s resignation in the coming week. Norway was among a handful of countries not to back his re-election as president next March, although several European federations have withdrawn their endorsement in the past week.
“We understand that we’re one country, but it’s our position,” Klaveness said. “It’s just one step further for us. We did not vote for him in 2023 but we hoped we would support him, he was elected and the reason why we were so clear in our statements was to really give the signal that we wanted him to implement the good reforms he was part of. But he didn’t, and now we will ask him to resign.”
Norway will also formalise a fresh complaint to Fifa’s ethics committee on three fronts, taking in the FFE scandal, the award of Fifa’s “peace prize” to Donald Trump and the Folarin Balogun affair of the recent World Cup. It will attempt to bring a number of major federations onboard for its submission.
