Asia backed Infantino in Tokyo two weeks ago, and Japan’s Kozo Tashima is now standing against him
Former JFA president Kozo Tashima will challenge Gianni Infantino at the FIFA presidential election in Rabat in March, if he can find five nominations by 18 November.
Nov 6, 2026
Kozo Tashima will stand against Gianni Infantino for the FIFA presidency. The 68-year-old honorary president of the Japan Football Association announced his candidacy on Thursday, 5 November, with the full backing of the JFA. He is the first Japanese candidate for FIFA’s top job.
The vote is on 18 March 2027 at the FIFA Congress in Rabat. Tashima has sat on the FIFA Council since 2015, and his reasons for running are not hard to read. He wants to show the world “the integrity, soundness, and high moral standards” of Japanese football, he said, and he said it was “highly undesirable for him to secure another term without an election.”
Two weeks after Asia picked Infantino
The timing is awkward for the AFC. On 23 October, at an extraordinary congress of the Asian Football Confederation in Tokyo, AFC president Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa promised Infantino the confederation’s “full commitment” for a fourth term, with Infantino in the room. Sheikh Salman admitted then that not every member would follow him. Now the challenge has come from Japan, where that congress was held.
Tashima himself says this is “not about winning or losing”, and calls the race a test of “whether FIFA possesses the capacity for self-correction.” That reads to me like a man who knows the numbers. Each of FIFA’s 211 associations has one vote. The AFC has 46 of them, India’s included. Africa has 54, CONCACAF 35, Oceania 11 and CONMEBOL 10. UEFA’s 55 are the obvious place to start. UEFA said on 1 August that it had no confidence in Infantino, and it has wanted him out ever since.
What started this
Infantino’s trouble goes back to FIFA Forward Enterprise, the plan announced on 28 July to sell private investors a stake in FIFA’s commercial rights, the World Cup included. UEFA’s members voted to boycott FIFA competitions until it was dropped, and Infantino withdrew it within days. He has spent the months since rebuilding support, and he told the BBC last month that he had the backing of the “vast, vast majority” of world football.
Tashima is the second name in the race. Former Switzerland defender Ramon Vega put himself forward in October. Neither is on the ballot yet: every candidate needs nominations from five FIFA member associations by 18 November, and then has to pass an eligibility check.
Who Tashima is
He grew up in Kumamoto and took up the game after watching the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. He was called up to Japan’s national team while still at university, later studied coaching at the German Sport University in Cologne, and coached Japan’s youth teams before moving into administration.
He was JFA president from 2016 to 2024. The decision people remember from that spell is the sacking of Vahid Halilhodžić two months before the 2018 World Cup. Akira Nishino took over, and Japan reached the last 16 before losing to Belgium.
Twelve days is not long to find five nominations. If Tashima gets them, Infantino will have a contest in March, which is exactly what Tashima says he wants.