"In my opinion, yes, I think his time is up." La Liga president Javier Tebas didn't bury the lead — he led with a verdict on Gianni Infantino that a growing number of people inside football quietly agree with but won't say out loud.
Tebas said it to La Gazzetta dello Sport on Tuesday, calling on the FIFA president to resign for "destroying the football industry" through relentless competition expansion. The 2030 World Cup, already bloated at 48 teams across six host nations on three continents, could be pushed to 64 teams following an official proposal from CONMEBOL. Tebas's response was blunt: "Increasing the number of national teams makes no sense."
A broken system with no opposition
The frustrating part, and Tebas acknowledged it directly, is that Infantino isn't going anywhere. He announced in April he'll run for a fourth presidential term, with the vote scheduled for March 18 in Morocco. There's no opposition candidate. Nobody wants to stand just to lose.
"There's no opposition candidate, nobody wants to stand just to lose. This is the system and it's rotten at its core," Tebas said. "I've heard many people who are against Infantino. They say it, but then they do nothing. I don't know what's worse, the silence or the complicity."
That's the real indictment — not just of Infantino, but of everyone around him. The federations back him. The silence of those who privately oppose him props him up just as effectively as a yes vote would.
The World Cup that divided football
The criticism didn't stop at expansion. Tebas went after the hydration breaks introduced at the 2026 World Cup to manage summer heat across the United States, Canada and Mexico — breaks he called "a lie." His reasoning: stadiums in Dallas, Los Angeles and Atlanta had air-conditioned pitches. The breaks, he argued, weren't about player welfare. They were about advertising windows.
The wider football community noticed too. Football Supporters Europe, UEFA's officially recognised fan body, released a statement calling FIFA "unfit to govern global football" after a tournament they described as prioritising "spectacle and commercialisation over the match-going experience." They pointed to record ticket prices, logistical chaos, and what they called the bending of rules and procedures as evidence of an organisation that has lost the plot.
- The 2030 World Cup will span six host nations across three continents
- CONMEBOL has formally proposed expanding the field from 48 to 64 teams
- The Spain vs Argentina final featured a 27-minute halftime interval instead of the standard 15
- Infantino is running unopposed for a fourth term; the vote is March 18, 2027 in Morocco
Tebas's core argument is an economic one, and it's hard to dismiss. "It's national competition that sustains this sport," he said. "They are destroying the football industry, which generates tens of thousands of jobs, for an event that lasts 40 days and involves a minority of players." Leagues, clubs, broadcasters — the entire domestic football ecosystem — are being squeezed to make room for a World Cup that keeps getting bigger and more commercially lucrative for FIFA specifically.
The La Liga chief knows Infantino won't resign. He said as much himself. What he's doing is building a record — naming the damage loudly enough that when the reckoning eventually comes, nobody can claim they weren't warned.
