FIFA has had its headquarters in Zurich since 1932. This could change now. A planned change to the statutes provides indications of this.
Exterior view of the Home of Fifa in Zurich.
Walter Bieri / Keystone
The Gaza conflict is also reaching the world football association. Officials from the Palestinian association PFA want to speak at the Fifa Congress, which will take place in Bangkok on Friday. Supported by Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Yemen, the PFA is calling for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli representatives are vehemently resisting the sports policy proposal; Foreign Minister Israel Katz recently described PFA President Jibril Radschub as a “terrorist in a suit”.
There is a heated discussion in Bangkok about a topic that actually only affects FIFA very indirectly. This may not be inconvenient for the leadership team around President Gianni Infantino: Immediately before the discussion about the PFA application, the agenda calls for a change to the statutes, which could almost be lost – regardless of the potentially serious consequences.
“The headquarters of FIFA is in Zurich (Switzerland),” it says in the statutes to date. It is also stated in the first paragraph that the world football association is registered in the commercial register of the canton of Zurich. If at least 75 percent of the delegates present agree, the two references to Switzerland will be deleted immediately.
Subsidiaries and branches all over the world
Under Infantino, the headquarters on Zurichberg has become increasingly irrelevant. The president temporarily lived in Doha with his family. FIFA opened a branch in Paris in 2021 and another in Singapore in 2023. Subsidiaries also exist in Moscow, Sydney, Mexico City, Wilmington (USA) and Victoria (Canada).
Current job relocations to Miami are particularly far-reaching. The legal department, internal auditing and risk management of the world football association will be located there from August. There is considerable dissatisfaction among the workforce with this decision. In order to motivate them to move, the then general secretary Fatma Samoura wrote to the employees last autumn that the vision of “making football truly global” would be continued in Miami. She said goodbye immediately afterwards.
If three quarters of the member associations speak out against Zurich, FIFA can leave the Limmat city.
Simon Tanner / NZZ
FIFA spokesman denies moving plans
Hardly anyone would be surprised if FIFA were to leave Zurich, where it has had its headquarters since 1932, sooner or later. The planned change to the statutes, which was first reported by the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, looks like a preparatory measure. A transitional provision is to be added to the association’s regulations in a less prominent place, in which Zurich is confirmed as FIFA’s headquarters. However, this language can be deleted by Congress at any time.
Meanwhile, a FIFA spokesman denies any plans to move. The statutes will be updated to clarify and confirm that Congress, as the ultimate decision-maker, determines the association’s headquarters, he says. It is also noted that the organization’s headquarters are in Zurich unless the Congress decides otherwise.
The fact that Congress is so explicitly given decision-making authority on the location issue is explosive. Because at the general assembly, proposed resolutions, if they are supported by the FIFA leadership, are usually approved with large majorities.
Hardly anyone wants to risk a conflict with headquarters
With approval rates that are otherwise known from communist regimes, the representatives of the 211 member associations wave through whatever ideas or projects are presented to them. Hardly anyone wants to risk a conflict with the headquarters, the dependencies are too great. European representatives, who had recently made critical comments in advance of decisions, also fell in line with the votes.
This could enable Infantino, whose inner distance from his Swiss homeland is no secret, to carry out a clever maneuver. He wouldn’t have to bring up a new headquarters himself. It would be conceivable that a national association submits a corresponding application so that it can be voted on at the congress. Exceptionally favorable tax conditions would be an obvious argument that could be made.
Such an approach would not be novel. Infantino once sympathized with the idea of holding the World Cup every two years, twice as often as before. However, he did not expose himself to the controversial request. Instead, the Saudi Arabian association president Yasser Almisehal called for a congress to examine a corresponding reform. Infantino was able to publicly assert that he had nothing to do with the official’s request.
It is similar now, with the symbolic deletion of Zurich from the first paragraphs of the Fifa statutes: Officially, the idea came about in a working group. On April 17th, it was made public by interim general secretary Mattias Grafström in a letter to the member associations.
If he wants, Infantino will be able to say at the end of the trial that because of him the latest episode of creeping estrangement between Fifa and Limmatstadt was not necessary. But he bows to the will of the majority.
