There is no international break for Gianni Infantino. While club football pauses and players rest, FIFA's president is expected to take the floor at the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week, working the room for votes the way a candidate works a campaign trail — because that is precisely what he is doing. His target: a fourth term as the most powerful man in world football, with the decisive FIFA Congress ballot scheduled for March. The travel schedule alone is remarkable.

Since FIFA quietly buried its controversial World Cup sell-off plan last month, Infantino has touched down in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Kyrgyzstan, Morocco, Qatar and the United States, among other stops. The jet carrying him between these destinations belongs to Qatar Airways, provided under that airline's sponsorship agreement with FIFA — an arrangement that raises an uncomfortable question: where does official FIFA business end and a personal re-election campaign begin? The answer, sources close to the process tell The Guardian, may not matter much, because Infantino is running out of opponents to face. Dozens of the 200 FIFA member associations that had previously signed letters of endorsement for him did withdraw their support after the sell-off controversy surfaced in July.

Yet the prevailing assessment is that the silent majority remain firmly in his corner. A well-timed funding approval for Caribbean Football Union projects appears to have further fragmented the Concacaf bloc, and even the European alliance is showing cracks. "As long as Gianni is running, I don't think anyone else will raise their hand," one insider told The Guardian. The math is brutal: Infantino commands the institution itself — its staff, its aircraft, its communications machinery.