Infantino’s World Cup Crisis: UEFA Has ‘Lost Confidence’ in FIFA
FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s leadership is facing an unprecedented crisis after European football’s governing body, UEFA, declared it had lost confidence in his leadership, even after he scrapped a controversial plan to sell a stake in the World Cup to private investors following days of fierce backlash.
Infantino announced late on Friday that he was abandoning the proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE) scheme, which would have raised up to $4.2 billion based on a $20 billion valuation of a new commercial subsidiary set to oversee events including the World Cup and Club World Cup. The plan had promised each of FIFA’s 211 member associations a one-off payment of $20 million in early 2027, alongside increased ongoing funding allocations, but it triggered intense opposition from multiple regional confederations who said they had been blindsided by the proposal.
The climbdown came after UEFA voted on Thursday to boycott FIFA entirely if the plan was not withdrawn. While UEFA welcomed Infantino’s decision to scrap the scheme in a statement issued Saturday, the body went considerably further, declaring that the current FIFA leadership had lost not only UEFA’s confidence but that of many others across the football world. UEFA criticised what it described as secret schemes pushed through on fast-track timescales by faceless individuals, of dubious benefit to the sport, and said those responsible needed to be identified and held accountable.
UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin has led the charge against Infantino throughout the crisis. The body’s statement recalled promises Infantino made when he was first elected FIFA president in 2016, including commitments to transparency and to treating FIFA’s finances as belonging to its member associations rather than to the presidency itself, arguing he had failed to deliver on both pledges despite FIFA’s reserves standing at over $5 billion.
CONCACAF joined UEFA in publicly declaring a loss of confidence in Infantino’s leadership on Saturday, describing the episode as part of a recurring pattern of governance missteps that demanded a comprehensive reckoning with the presidency. Other national federations also voiced sharp criticism. The Dutch football association said the process amounted to a fundamental breach of trust, while the president of the German federation said Infantino had acted unilaterally and without transparency. Spanish La Liga president Javier Tebas went further still, publicly calling for Infantino’s resignation and arguing that the underlying problem was a governance model that concentrates power and marginalises those affected by FIFA’s decisions.
FIFA and Infantino have so far declined to comment directly on UEFA’s statement. UEFA has indicated it will work with member associations and other confederations in the coming days and weeks to examine how the situation arose and to develop safeguards intended to prevent a similar episode from happening again.
The fallout represents one of the most serious governance crises of Infantino’s presidency and has raised questions over his political standing ahead of FIFA’s congress next March, where he had been expected to seek re-election unopposed. Whether the scale of the backlash affects that trajectory remains to be seen, as football’s global governing bodies continue to grapple with the aftermath of the abandoned deal.
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