FIFA President Gianni Infantino congratulated new Swedish Football Association (SvFF) President Simon Åström on his recent election and highlighted their organisations’ long and productive relationship in a meeting in Miami, United States. Mr Åström was among a number of FIFA Member Association (MA) representatives who attended the first of three FIFA Executive Football Summits that Mr Infantino will lead during the FIFA Club World Cup 2025™.

“After today’s FIFA Executive Football Summit 2025 in Miami, I had the opportunity to meet Swedish Football Association (SvFF) President Simon Åström and congratulate him on his recent election. As the SvFF are one of FIFA’s founding members, we also discussed how we can continue to use our long-standing relationship – of over 120 years – to continue to serve football together,” explained the FIFA President. “Sweden has a proud record in women's football in particular, and through our various collaborative initiatives, we want football to continue inspiring more people in this nation. I also wished the men's national team good luck as they seek to qualify for the FIFA World Cup in 2026.” While the men’s national team kick off their bid for a FIFA World Cup 26™ place in September and the women’s national team are gearing up for the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027™ qualification campaign, Mr Åström will seek to implement the policies he ran on in the SvFF presidential election. He highlighted three priority areas – keeping as many players as possible active in football, for as long as possible; developing strong club and national teams; and making use of being Sweden's biggest popular movement – while he will also have a central role to play in the pilot phase of the new National Technical Centre, a project that has received USD 80,000 in funding from the FIFA Forward Programme.

As SvFF Vice President, Mr Åström had attended the FIFA 120th anniversary celebrations in Paris in May 2024, but was delighted to have an opportunity to have a longer face-to-face discussion with the FIFA President together with FIFA Secretary General Mattias Grafström. “As a new president, it was first of all a meet-and-greet meeting and a chance to get to know each other a little bit better. We had met on some previous occasions, but this was our first chance to sit down and talk just the two of us,” said Mr Åström, who was accompanied by SvFF Acting General Secretary Tobias Tibell. “It was good to just talk about relationships and the history we have between FIFA and the Swedish FA over the years.”