UEFA and Concacaf lose confidence in Infantino after FIFA withdraws $20bn World Cup privatization plan

The withdrawn proposal

Gianni Infantino's plan to hive off FIFA's commercial activities, including the men's and women's World Cups and Club World Cups, into a $20bn subsidiary with a 20% private-investor stake was abandoned on Friday night. The proposal, first revealed by US media and met with widespread shock, had been pushed with a two-month deadline for federations to accept. Infantino said he had "listened carefully to all views" and concluded the project had created divisions that no longer served its original purpose.

UEFA's blistering response

Far from closing the matter, the withdrawal triggered an extraordinary public rebuke from UEFA on Saturday. The European governing body, whose 55 member federations had unanimously rejected the plan and threatened a boycott of FIFA competitions, declared that the current FIFA leadership had lost its confidence. "No option should be ruled out," UEFA stated, in a clear signal that Infantino's decade-long presidency is now in jeopardy.

The current FIFA leadership has not only lost the confidence of UEFA, but also that of many other members of the football family.

The statement described the deal as "murky, opaque and devised behind closed doors, far from the terms of transparency Infantino promised when he was elected president in 2016." UEFA also noted that $5bn in federation reserves "have not been used for the benefit of football" and insisted that distributing that money would not require selling "the family jewels."

Concacaf and Asia join the pressure

Concacaf, which hosted the 2026 World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada, issued its own statement hours later. It said a proposal of this magnitude reaching that stage "is the reflection of a leadership that has stopped putting football first" and called for "a comprehensive review of this leadership." The Asian Football Confederation's president, Sheikh Salman bin Ibrahim Al Khalifa, adopted a more moderate tone, welcoming the withdrawal and urging that "the future of world football must always be shaped through proper consultation, collective dialogue and respect for our sport's established governance structures."

Broken promises

UEFA directly quoted Infantino's 2016 election pitch, when he told member federations: "The money of FIFA is your money. It is not the money of the FIFA president. It is your money. You are the national federations and FIFA's money must serve the development of football and nothing else." UEFA then declared: "On both promises, he has not delivered."

Of course we must be transparent. I have been for the last 15 years of my life at UEFA. You will have to play a role every day in the life of FIFA. The money of FIFA is your money.

What comes next

UEFA said it will work with its federations and other confederations in the coming days and weeks to "reflect on how this happened and draw up a plan to ensure it never happens again." The review, it insisted, "must be exhaustive and fundamental." The body also demanded that those responsible for the "secret plans, rushed through at speed, devised by anonymous individuals and of dubious benefit to the sport" be identified and held to account.