Would Arsene Wenger make a good FIFA president?
· Yahoo Sports
“Anyone who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.”
Visit een-wit.pl for more information.
It’s something that has been attributed to everyone from Plato to Douglas Adams. This version is from Gore Vidal, but the sentiment is the same: the genuine desire for such power indicates a character that should not be trusted with it.
Wenger, who since 2019 has been FIFA’s ‘Chief of Global Football Development’, is being lobbied by assorted figures, desperate to find a credible alternative to Infantino. Perhaps you could argue that someone who has to be persuaded to take on such a significant role is inherently unsuited to it, but such is the position that football finds itself: even an extremely reluctant Wenger is preferable to what we have now.
But maybe his reluctance is genuinely a strength. This is a man with little political ambition, who has already done his life’s work. He will presumably have little interest in sucking up to Donald Trump or any other global political figure who might help make FIFA more money.
His heart, at least, would in theory be in the right place, because his priority would be to improve football as a global game, rather than to turn it into a geopolitical ego-stroke or to think of it primarily as a business. He would be less interested in celebrity, neither boosting his own profile nor attempting to bask in the glow of others.
Put it this way: you’re unlikely to see Wenger chumming it up with Salt Bae.
View this post on Instagram
Wenger would be the first ‘football man’ to hold the post. Sir Stanley Rous, who was president from 1961 to 1974, was a referee. His successor, Joao Havelange, was an Olympic swimmer and water polo player. The others have all essentially been career administrators, no more so than the last two incumbents: Sepp Blatter might as well have been born in a meeting room, working for an array of sporting bodies before becoming Havelange’s bagman and eventually succeeding him, while Infantino was a lawyer who joined UEFA’s marketing division aged 30, and climbed assorted greasy poles until he reached his current position.
The other currently declared candidates are Ramon Vega, the former Tottenham defender who is realistically little more than a spoiler figure with little hope of getting many votes, but the honorary president of the Japanese FA, Kozo Tashima, might be more credible. A former player himself who briefly coached some Japanese national youth teams and has spent the last two decades navigating the world of football politics. He doesn’t have Wenger’s name, but he does have more relevant experience.
But if he stands, Wenger will be by far the most credible and best-known alternative candidate to Infantino.
There is an elephant in the room here. While Wenger may have purer intentions, he could spoil football in a different way, because Wenger’s post-management existence has been largely defined by his madcap suggestions on how to ‘improve’ the game through tweaks in the rules.
There was the kick-ins wheeze, when he proposed that, instead of being awarded a throw-in if the ball went out in your own half, you could kick it. The idea of Wenger, who built his reputation on passing football, encouraging a big hoof upfield is… jarring, to say the least.
At one point he proposed the idea that if an outswinging corner goes out of play but comes back in, it should be allowed to stand. This seems to be the definition of fixing a problem that doesn’t exist, but he said it would “create new goal-scoring opportunities”. To which the obvious response is ‘well, maybe, but so would picking the ball up and running into the goal with it… that doesn’t make it a good idea’.
And then there’s the ‘daylight offside’ thing, his proposal being that as long as some part of the body an attacker can score with is behind the defensive line, it should be onside. That has been trialled in Canada, but received limited support at the International Football Association Board’s assessment panels in October, so is unlikely to be extended.
In his current role, football is just about able to smile and nod politely, run a quiet trial of the new suggestions in a relatively low-profile league or youth tournament somewhere, then solemnly say that, alas, it didn’t really work. Sorry, Uncle Arsene, we’ll see you in a few months for another brainstorming session.
However, if he’s the most powerful man in the sport, then he will obviously have much more scope to force some of these changes through. That could be… not ideal.
The real danger here is probably judging any potential candidate not on whether they would actually be good at the job, but whether they would be preferable in some way to what we have now.
But such is the position that football — and specifically the anti-Infantino factions in the game — finds itself. You can talk yourself into pretty much anyone being better than the current guy.
The chances are that, even if Wenger stands, Infantino will still win. And even if he does stand, and he does win, he might not, on balance, actually be a force for good. But such are the lows that the FIFA presidency has sunk to, a reluctant man with bad ideas might be the best option available.
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
Arsenal, France, Premier League, Champions League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1, Sports Business, Europa League, FIFA Men's World Cup, Women's Euros, European Championship, FIFA Women's World Cup, FIFA Club World Cup, UEFA Nations League, UEFA Conference League
2026 The Athletic Media Company