European soccer declared Saturday it has lost confidence in FIFA President Gianni Infantino, a dramatic escalation that came just hours after the embattled leader was forced to scrap a secret plan to sell off a stake of World Cup profits to private investors. The statement from UEFA, European soccer’s governing body, amounted to what many observers are calling the opening salvo in a campaign to end Infantino’s decade-long grip on power over the world’s most popular sport. “No option should be off the table,” UEFA said, adding that the current FIFA leadership has not only lost Europe’s confidence but also that of many others across the global football family.
Infantino had proposed spinning off FIFA’s commercial businesses into a $20 billion subsidiary with 20 percent owned by private investors, with the anchor investor being a New York-based firm launched by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump. The plan, announced Tuesday, drew immediate backlash that only intensified as the week wore on. By Thursday, UEFA’s 55 member nations agreed to boycott the World Cup and all other FIFA competitions if the deal moved forward. North America’s CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation soon joined the opposition, creating an unprecedented wall of resistance against Infantino’s vision.
The collapse came swiftly after internal revolt took hold at FIFA headquarters. Carlos Cordeiro, Infantino’s senior adviser and a former Goldman Sachs banker who represented FIFA on a White House task force for the World Cup, resigned Friday and urged other senior staff to speak out. Hours later, FIFA chief operating officer Kevin Lamour told The Associated Press that staff had been deceived by Infantino’s lack of openness and called the project the work of one person. “Not only must this project not go ahead,” Lamour wrote, “but the time has now come for football political leaders to ask themselves the right questions and make the right decisions.”
This is at least the third time Infantino has rocked international soccer with an ambitious scheme widely viewed as reckless, following a secretive $25 billion offer from Japan’s SoftBank in 2018 and his push for biennial World Cups in 2021. Both were eventually dropped despite causing deep rifts across the sport, and Infantino was re-elected unopposed in both 2019 and 2023. But this time feels different. With November 18 set as the deadline for candidates to enter the next presidential election ahead of a March vote in Rabat, Morocco, there is growing momentum behind a coordinated challenge that could finally unseat him. Most of Europe’s 55 votes combined with Asia’s 46 and CONCACAF’s 35 would form a formidable base, and for the first time, UEFA appears ready to act quickly rather than wait for the storm to pass.
