FIFA issued a late-night statement defending its controversial plan to sell a stake in the World Cup to private investors, blaming "erroneous reporting" for disrupting the consultation process and insisting that "nobody is selling football."
The statement came after European and North American football bodies united against the proposal. All 55 UEFA member nations unanimously agreed to boycott future FIFA competitions over the plan, while CONCACAF's 35 member associations rejected it, though they stopped short of threatening withdrawal from FIFA tournaments.
"UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions," the European body said following an urgent online meeting. "Some things are simply too important to sell. The FIFA World Cup belongs to football. It always will."
What the Plan Involves
FIFA president Gianni Infantino's proposal, revealed on Tuesday, would spin off FIFA's commercial operations into a new $20 billion subsidiary called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), with 20 percent owned by private investors. The core investor would be a New York investment firm created by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Infantino wrote to FIFA's 211 member associations offering to double their basic funding from $10 million to $20 million over the next four years if they approve the FFE. He projected total FIFA funding through 2038 would reach $86 million per member, compared to roughly $36 million under current arrangements. Members have until mid-September to accept the offer.
FIFA Pushes Back
In its statement, released in the early hours of Friday morning at its headquarters in Switzerland, FIFA said it would press ahead with putting the FFE proposal to a vote. "Our planned consultation process was disrupted by incorrect media reports," the statement read. "We will proceed with this consultation process to ensure that each member association has the ability to express its vote based on facts."
FIFA did not specify which reports it considered erroneous.
Infantino's Position Under Threat
To pass the proposal, Infantino would need the backing of 106 member associations. With 90 FIFA members now publicly opposed, just 16 more in opposition would make it impossible for the plan to pass.
Sources told the Daily Mail that opposition to Infantino's FIFA presidency is growing within CONCACAF, with the vast majority of member associations said to have already lost confidence in his leadership. UEFA, where Infantino previously served as general secretary before being elected FIFA president in 2016, called the plan "a profound failure of leadership" and "an abdication of FIFA's duty as the custodian of world football."
FIFA has set a November 18 deadline for candidates to declare for a presidential election scheduled for next March in Rabat, Morocco. Officials have said privately that Infantino is eyeing a commissioner-like role at the FFE spinoff beyond 2031.
The next scheduled FIFA tournament is the Women's Under-20 World Cup, hosted by Poland from September 5.
