Just two weeks after the conclusion of the 2026 World Cup finals, world football is faced with the unthinkable: a schism between its global governing body and its wealthiest and most powerful confederation. Uefa and its 55 member associations have declared they will boycott every Fifa competition, from next year’s Women’s World Cup to age-group tournaments, unless Gianni Infantino abandons his plan to sell a stake in the sport’s crown jewels to private investors.
Infantino’s proposal is remarkable in both its ambition and its recklessness. Fifa wants to hive off the commercial rights to the World Cup and other tournaments into a new $20 billion vehicle, offering a fifth of it to outside money led by Joshua Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law. That the scheme was drawn up in secret, using connections close to the Trump network, and sprung on a Fifa council kept deliberately in the dark, tells its own story.
The financial logic does not survive contact with the numbers. This summer’s tournament generated more than $2 billion in profit and is reckoned to have been the most lucrative sporting event on earth. An organisation sitting on billions in reserves, presiding over the most profitable competition ever staged, does not need private equity. It does, however, need good governance, transparency and a president willing to consult with his members rather than attempt to intimidate them.
What began as a revolt over a bad idea has escalated. Concacaf’s 41 members in North and Central American and the Caribbean have also rejected the plan. Even Infantino’s predecessor Sepp Blatter, no paragon, calls it damaging. Under Fifa’s statutes, a fifth of members can force an extraordinary congress and a confidence vote.
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Infantino insists nobody is selling football. The trouble is that almost nobody believes him. The World Cup belongs to the players and supporters who built it over generations, held in trust rather than owned. It is not Infantino’s to sell, and the game has finally found the will to say so.
Source: The Irish Times
