Gianni Infantino’s senior adviser to the FIFA president resigned with immediate effect over a plan to open football’s governing body to private investors, as European opposition hardened and former UEFA president Michel Platini voiced support for the boycott.
The adviser said he could not stand by while FIFA was considering selling a share of the World Cup. After careful reflection, he said he could no longer carry out his duties and resigned immediately.
According to French sports daily L’Equipe, Platini called UEFA president Ceferin to congratulate him on the initiative. The content of their conversation was not disclosed.
The Belgian football federation rejected the proposal and said it fully supported the communique issued by UEFA. Pascale Van Damme, president of the federation’s board of directors, said the World Cup represented a unique sporting and societal heritage that must be managed in the interest of football and all its stakeholders. She said decisions of such impact on the future of world football must be taken through a transparent and rigorous process, with genuine involvement from national associations. The federation said it was giving itself two weeks to appoint an agency to carry out an analysis of the new format.
Andy Burnham, identified by the source as head of the British government, said on Friday that Infantino was the wrong person to lead FIFA, speaking to journalists during a visit to Sheffield in northern England. He called the proposal scandalous and said the very fact it had been considered demonstrated that Infantino should not be running the organisation.
The director of French think tank IRIS wrote that Infantino, who had believed himself untouchable after the 2026 World Cup, now found himself with his back against the wall. He said UEFA’s financial independence was allowing it to resist, while more vulnerable federations had been bought off with promises of subsidies. He warned that sacrificing sporting ethics for private interests risked reducing the World Cup to a mere consumer product stripped of its soul.
The Oceania Football Confederation said it would examine the proposal at its executive committee meeting in August and invited its member associations to take part in the consultation process.
