As the World Cup Nears, Reboot FIFA Challenges Football’s Governing Body

By Sehr Khosla

President Donald Trump and FIFA President Gianni Infantino announce Kennedy Center as FIFA World Cup 2025 draw location. The White House. CC0.

One week before the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, advocacy organization FairSquare launched Reboot FIFA, a public campaign urging supporters to join what it hopes will become the largest ethics complaint ever filed against the association. The complaint accuses FIFA President Gianni Infantino of repeatedly violating the organization’s political neutrality rules through his public support for U.S. President Donald Trump and argues that the allegations reflect deeper governance problems within football’s governing body.

Launched early this June, Reboot FIFA invites members of the public to add their names to an updated ethics complaint originally submitted by FairSquare in December 2025.

FairSquare argues that Infantino’s appearances alongside Trump, including his involvement with the FIFA Peace Prize awarded to the president and subsequent cooperation with Trump’s Board of Peace initiative, violated FIFA’s requirement that officials remain politically neutral. FIFA has not publicly accepted that characterization and maintains that its governance reforms have strengthened accountability and oversight.

With global attention turning toward the World Cup, the campaign highlights that the tournament provides a rare opportunity to pressure FIFA over issues of accountability and transparency.

For many supporters, the controversy recalls FIFA’s 2015 corruption scandal, when U.S. prosecutors charged dozens of football officials in a sweeping investigation into bribery, racketeering and money laundering. The scandal forced the departure of longtime FIFA President Sepp Blatter and prompted promises of far-reaching institutional reform.

Under Infantino, FIFA has repeatedly pointed to increased transparency measures, independent audits and billions of dollars invested in football development worldwide. Following “deep-rooted governance and management reforms,” as a FIFA spokesperson told The Guardian, the organization insists that it is now more accountable than ever.

For FairSquare, however, the persistence of controversy suggests otherwise. The NGO argues that FIFA’s problems are structural rather than personal.

“FairSquare has long argued that FIFA’s structural problems cannot be fixed from within and that external reform is critical,” the organization wrote in launching the campaign.

More significant to fans than the complaint itself is what it reveals about FIFA’s governance model, with FairSquare arguing that the organization simultaneously acts as football’s regulator and commercial powerhouse, creating conflicts of interest. Among the reforms proposed by the campaign are stronger auditing of FIFA’s finances, greater transparency in decision-making, and a clearer separation between its commercial operations and governance functions.

The campaign has also received support from the Norwegian Football Federation, whose president, Lise Klaveness, has called for the complaint to be properly assessed by FIFA’s ethics committee. This backing matters for fans because it suggests that concerns about governance are not limited to activists and watchdog groups but are increasingly being voiced by member associations themselves.

Whether Reboot FIFA succeeds in forcing change remains uncertain, especially considering that previous reform efforts have often struggled against an institution whose leadership is ultimately accountable to the same internal structures that elect it. Nonetheless, the campaign’s significance lies less in the fate of a single ethics complaint than in the question it raises. Years after FIFA’s most serious corruption crisis, football's governing body continues to face accusations of weak accountability and conflicts of interest. If FIFA wishes to claim it represents the global game, critics argue, it must do more than organize tournaments. Now, it must convince players, supporters and member associations that it is answerable to them as well.

Readers can learn more about the Reboot FIFA campaign and add their names to the ethics complaint through FairSquare's campaign website: https://rebootfifa.com/sign/

Sehr Khosla

Sehr is a student at Georgetown University studying Classics and Government with a minor in Journalism. In the future, she hopes to combine her passion for social justice with communications to advocate for change. Outside of writing, she enjoys travelling and reading murder mysteries.