Take me to your leader: Lise Klaveness
Norway's FA president is emerging as an alternative to Gianni Infantino's corruption, avoiding easy rhetoric while navigating a FIFA where Europe no longer calls the shots alone.
On the morning of Norway’s Round of 16 clash with Brazil (they won 2-1, courtesy of Erling Haaland’s genius), FIFA announced that the red card shown to USA striker Folarin Balogun was being suspended till after the World Cup. In the United States’ Round of 32 match against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Balogun scraped the back of his opponent’s calf before stepping on his ankle and twisting his foot, earning a straight red card. The suspension meant he would miss the match against Belgium tonight, July 6th, at 8 pm EST.
Then FIFA intervened. Invoking a rarely used rule – previously applied only to Garrincha in 1962 and to Cristiano Ronaldo so he could play in Portugal’s opening match of the 2026 World Cup — it ruled that Balogun would be eligible after all.
When Donald Trump tweeted his thanks to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, many fans saw it as yet more evidence of FIFA’s deference to — and collusion with — one of the tournament’s three hosts (the dominant one), reinforcing the view that Infantino’s time should be up. The Financial Times reported that Trump had called Infantino to review the referee’s decision. The FT quotes an unnamed US official saying the “US government provided ‘additional evidence that was used in the appeal process’.” This is at odds with FIFA’s rules too as it strictly forbids government interference in footballing decisions. It has suspended national associations where governments interfere in football matters. The Guardian reported that Trump made three calls to FIFA about the matter. At a press conference Trump called the referee “suspect,” made a host of other claims that showed his ignorance of the game, and effectively exposed the corruption out loud.
UEFA was quick to criticize the decision, and Belgium, the injured party and one of its members, joined the chorus. Yet given the balance of forces in world football, it is difficult to see those criticisms amounting to much. FIFA’s leadership has repeatedly weathered such rebukes, and the most likely outcome is that the controversy fades and business continues as usual — or the situation within FIFA deteriorates further.
If there is one figure who could emerge as the public face of a more sustained opposition to Infantino, however, it is Lise Klaveness, president of the Norwegian Football Association. While she lacks the institutional power to challenge FIFA on her own, she has consistently shown a willingness to confront its leadership in ways that few other football officials have.
And based on Klaveness’ public posture in Infantino’s presence and some of her actions recently, she is clearly not a fan.
On June 20, Norway faced Côte d’Ivoire in Houston in the Round of 32. Infantino is usually joined in the stands by the presidents of the national federations whose teams are playing. When the television cameras panned to Infantino and Lise Klaveness seated side by side, viewers immediately noticed the awkward tension between them. As Daniel Levy explained on World Cup Weekly, when he was watching some Norwegian friends inboxed him a screenshot, “look at her expression, the ice [stare] on her. Now look her up.” Levy told viewers to pay attention to Klaveness; “she is awesome.”
Levy was talking about Klaveness’ activism to make FIFA, and her continental confederation UEFA, more accountable.
One notable example of her outspokenness came during the FIFA Congress in Doha in March 2022, when Klaveness, in front of Infantino, delivered a speech arguing that the international football community should do more to support migrant workers in Qatar, better protect LGBTQ+ football supporters at the World Cup, and make the game welcoming to everyone. Klaveness has the support of the country’s footballers and clubs. Norwegian clubs wanted the country to boycott qualifiers for Qatar, but the FA voted against it. In March 2021, during their World Cup qualifying matches, players—including Erling Haaland and Martin Ødegaard—wore t-shirts during warmups that read “HUMAN RIGHTS - On and off the pitch” and “Respect on and off the pitch.”
In the end, Norway did not qualify for Qatar, and some critics dismissed Norway’s and Klaveness’ criticisms of the host nation as part of a broader pattern of Western virtue signaling about the Middle East, particularly the growing role of Gulf states in world football. They also argued that such criticism overlooked—or remained silent about—the duplicity and hypocrisy of “sportswashing” by Western governments and corporations in tandem with their media organizations, often in partnership with Gulf governments. But there is more to Klaveness than her criticism of Qatar.
In April this year, Klaveness led efforts to abolish the newly created FIFA Peace Prize, awarded to U.S. President Donald Trump, supporting an ethics complaint against Gianni Infantino. “We don’t think it’s part of FIFA’s mandate to give such a prize. We think we have a Nobel institute that does that job independently already.” The Irish FA joined her call.
Most of all, she has called for an investigation into Israel (who Norway was drawn against in the 2026 FIFA World Cup qualification campaign) stating that the NFF could not remain indifferent to civilian casualties in Gaza.
Klaveness, it seems, is strategic about her activism. Before the match, she spoke on Norwegian podcast Pop & Politics saying: “I work on the issue from a principled standpoint, but we will not boycott on our own. A boycott would only result in Israel going to the World Cup instead of us.” The NFF also donated profits from ticket sales from the match against Israel to support the work of Doctors Without Borders in Gaza, prompting immediate criticism from the Israelis. The game was won by Norway, while also securing their first tournament bid in 28 years.
Then, in the run-up to this World Cup, she raised concerns regarding US immigration agency, ICE’s presence at World Cup games. To little avail. “We are very concerned that it should be inclusive and safe for everybody regardless of ethnicity, which country you come from, your sexual orientation,” she said.
Klaveness was well prepared for the fight she is now waging. A former player, she earned 73 caps for Norway between 2002 and 2011 before retiring to study law and work her way up through football administration. She is also openly gay and married to a woman, giving her a personal stake in advocating for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the game.
Klaveness was the subject of a book in Norwegian, “Lise Vs. Infantino,” that came out right before the World Cup, but has since been withdrawn after the writer Niels Røine, the former CEO of the Norwegian FA, was accused of using AI to write parts of the book. In an interview, Røine suggests that the real litmus test for Klaveness is the 2034 World Cup in Saudi Arabia: “It is both about all the arenas to be built [and the treatment of workers], and that 600,000 to 700,000 people will come to a country where women are not allowed to go to the matches.”
Klaveness seems aware of the political stakes of her outspokenness. In another interview, she said that Norway won’t boycott the 2034 World Cup: “We don’t have anything against those countries; our message is more on the adjudication process.”
Football has changed since the time when Europe - through UEFA - with South American backing, largely controlled or steered the governance of the global game under FIFA. Today, apart from entrenched conservative interests - big business, the United States (Infantino’s genuflecting to the Trump regime and American corporations is embarrassing), and Gulf states - Klaveness has to navigate a far more fragmented political landscape in FIFA. That includes a crucial bloc of Asian and African associations, which together form a numerical majority at FIFA Congresses and have, in many cases, benefited from the redistribution and development programs of the Sepp Blatter (who laid the groundwork for the way FIFA works now) and Gianni Infantino eras, even as broader controversies around Infantino’s leadership are frequently debated.
It is also worth noting that many of these Asian and African federations are not particularly enamored with European calls for reform or moral instruction about the game. Yet in this context, Lise Klaveness has, at least so far, managed to avoid the easy rhetoric - she seems to be trying to “walk the walk” rather than simply lecture from a European perch.
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