Photo: Carter Sterling / Flickr, CC BY-SA 4.0
Gianni Infantino blinked.
FIFA’s president confirmed on Friday that he is abandoning his plan to sell a stake in the World Cup to private investors. This is just three days after unveiling it and one day after the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) voted to boycott every Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) competition in response.
“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place,” Infantino said in a statement. “As a result, this proposal will not proceed.”
So what forced such a rapid U-turn? Infantino had proposed FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), a new commercial subsidiary that would sell a 20 per cent stake to outside investors, raising up to $4.2 billion at a $20 billion valuation.
Leading the investment was Thrive Eternal, a firm founded by Joshua Kushner, whose brother Jared Kushner is the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump. Within 72 hours, UEFA’s 55 members had voted unanimously to boycott future World Cups. The Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) had rejected the plan outright, and Infantino’s own senior adviser had resigned in protest.
Fans who watched Spain lift the World Cup this summer will recognise why the backlash mattered. Three of the last tournament’s four semi-finalists came from Europe, and no private investor was ever going to buy into a World Cup without its biggest teams involved. Consequently, once UEFA made its threat concrete, the maths behind the deal simply stopped working.
How the Plan Fell Apart So Fast
The collapse did not happen in one dramatic moment. Rather, it built through a sequence of blows that Infantino could not absorb.
- UEFA’s unanimous vote: All 55 members backed a boycott of every FIFA competition, calling the World Cup “not for sale.”
- CONCACAF and the AFC rejected the plan too: Neither confederation threatened a boycott, but both demanded proper governance and consultation.
- Carlos Cordeiro resigned: Infantino’s senior adviser and a former Goldman Sachs banker called the scheme “a bad deal for football” that he had no hand in shaping.
- FIFA’s own Chief Operating Officer (COO) spoke out: Kevin Lamour said staff felt deceived by how the plan was handled, without formally resigning.
Meanwhile, Infantino had tried to sweeten the deal, offering FIFA’s 211 member associations up to $40 million each if they backed the proposal by 19 September. However, that incentive could not outweigh the reputational cost once four separate power centres inside football turned against him within the same week.
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What Happens Now?
UEFA’s response to the climbdown was not entirely warm. The European body welcomed the reversal but accused Infantino of pursuing a “shabby, back room, opaque deal” that had cost him its confidence. CONCACAF struck a similar tone, describing the episode as part of “a pattern of missteps” that demands a “comprehensive reckoning” with Infantino’s presidency. The Asian Football Confederation, by contrast, used softer language, simply welcoming the withdrawal and calling for future proposals to go through proper consultation.
For Infantino personally, the timing could hardly be worse. He is seeking a further term as FIFA president, with the presidential election deadline set for 18 November ahead of a vote in Rabat, Morocco. Having previously been reelected unopposed, he now faces a football world that has just demonstrated, emphatically, that it can force him to reverse course. Will this dent his grip on FIFA’s presidency, or will the crisis blow over by kick-off in Poland? That question will define football’s power politics through the rest of 2026.
Also Read: FIFA World Cup 2026 – Dates, Teams, Format and Everything You Need To Know
