UEFA has fired a formal legal warning at Gianni Infantino, telling the FIFA president in a letter dated Tuesday that it is "actively considering legal steps, arbitration, and regulatory complaints" over his abandoned scheme to sell private stakes in the World Cup.

The letter, reported by The Telegraph, orders Infantino and FIFA to immediately locate and preserve every document and piece of electronic correspondence connected to the plan, warning that "any destruction, deletion, alteration, concealment, or loss of relevant materials following receipt of this notice may constitute spoliation of evidence." UEFA has given him five business days to confirm compliance.

The dispute centres on the FIFA Forward Enterprise, a proposed commercial subsidiary that would have taken over running FIFA's biggest properties, including the World Cup and Club World Cup. The plan aimed to raise as much as $4.2 billion by selling a minority stake in a company valued at around $20 billion, with Infantino pitching it as a way to "turbocharge the development of the game globally."

Reporting on the proposed investors named Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, through his Thrive Capital vehicle, alongside Trump-aligned media executive Greg Maffei — details that fuelled suspicion in European football circles that the deal was being negotiated in secrecy with a narrow circle of private backers.

UEFA's 55 member federations, including Israel's, threatened to boycott FIFA tournaments outright if the sale went ahead, a stance CNN and other outlets described as unprecedented unity from a body that rarely confronts FIFA so directly.

Facing that revolt, FIFA withdrew the proposal on 31 July. But UEFA did not stand down. In a blistering statement the following morning, it welcomed the climbdown while branding the scheme "the shabby, back room, opaque deal he hatched and tried to force through," and declared it had formally "lost confidence" in Infantino's leadership.

The political cost has already landed close to Infantino. Carlos Cordeiro, a senior adviser to the FIFA president and a former U.S. Soccer chief, resigned on 1 August, saying he had opposed the privatization plan "unequivocally."

CONCACAF piled on too, calling the episode symptomatic of Infantino's "poor governance and leadership" and demanding what it called "a comprehensive reckoning with this presidency" — a rare instance of a second confederation joining UEFA's criticism rather than shielding the FIFA president.

Infantino is due to stand for re-election as FIFA president next year, and the scale of the backlash — from Europe's boycott threat to CONCACAF's rebuke and now UEFA's evidence-preservation letter — has opened the first serious question marks over whether he survives the vote.

For now, the World Cup sale itself is dead. What UEFA is pursuing is accountability for how close it came to happening, and whether Infantino's own conduct in negotiating it broke FIFA's governance rules — a fight that, on the evidence of Tuesday's letter, is only beginning.