Full story
UEFA Rejects FIFA Plan
UEFA said it has lost confidence in FIFA leadership under Gianni Infantino and voted on Thursday to boycott FIFA if it did not withdraw its proposal to sell minority shares in World Cups and other events to private investors.
“UEFA voted on Thursday to boycott FIFA if it did not withdraw its proposal”
UEFA’s statement attacked the plan as “secret schemes on fast track timescales, cooked up by faceless individuals and of dubious benefit to the game,” and said “The current FIFA leadership has not only lost UEFA’s confidence but also that of many other members of the football family.”
Infantino later announced late on Friday that he would be scrapping his FIFA Future Enterprise (FFE) plan following widespread backlash, and UEFA welcomed the move while detailing its criticism in a Saturday statement.
UEFA said it wants to work with partners and stakeholders to propose new ways of distributing resources through the existing FIFA Forward Programme, adding that it wants to use money “sat idle in FIFA’s bank account” rather than “sell off the family silver.”
Infantino’s Reversal, More Pressure
Infantino’s reversal came after UEFA threatened on Thursday to boycott FIFA competitions, and after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) reacted first with a letter from its president, Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa, saying he expects “any initiative that has the potential to impact global football will be presented and discussed” with stakeholders.
In that same AFC letter, Sheikh Salman said “The future of global football must always be shaped through proper consultation, collective dialogue and respect for the established governance structures of our game,” while the Al Jazeera report noted UEFA’s criticism of Infantino’s approach.
The Italian outlet L'INDIPENDENTE described the privatization plan as involving the cessione del 21 per cento delle quote and said it was withdrawn only after criticism arrived from decine di federazioni calcistiche.
L'INDIPENDENTE also quoted UEFA’s warning that “L’attuale dirigenza della Fifa non solo ha perso la fiducia dell’Uefa, ma anche quella di molti altri membri della famiglia del calcio,” framing the withdrawal as not ending the dispute.
Governance Crisis and Stakes
UEFA’s push for accountability centers on how the FFE proposal was conceived and pushed forward, with UEFA saying the withdrawal was “only the beginning of the process to restore trust in FIFA” and calling for a thorough analysis of who designed and approved the project.
“only the beginning of the process to restore trust in FIFA”
In the same account, UEFA said “football could not be governed by secret projects, rushed deadlines, and agreements whose benefits to the game had not been clearly demonstrated,” and it asked that individuals responsible be identified and held accountable.
The stakes now include Infantino’s political position ahead of the March 2027 election, with UEFA noting that it cannot remove him alone because the president is elected by the 211 federations in the Congress.
RFI described the crisis as extending beyond the FFE itself, saying “the problem now goes beyond the FIFA Forward Enterprise alone: it is Gianni Infantino's governance itself that is being questioned,” while also noting that the three confederations that publicly opposed the project account for 143 of FIFA’s 211 member associations.
