Gianni Infantino is facing the gravest challenge of his ten years running world football's governing body, with Uefa and two other continental confederations now threatening to boycott Fifa's own competitions — the World Cup included — unless the Fifa president abandons a plan to sell a slice of the tournament to private investors.
The proposal at the heart of the row would spin off Fifa's commercial operations, including the World Cup and Club World Cup, into a new subsidiary valued at tens of billions of dollars, with roughly 20% of it sold to outside investors. The lead investor identified in reporting is a New York investment firm founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump.
Uefa, which represents 55 of Fifa's 211 member federations, has called the move 'irresponsible and indefensible', accusing Infantino's leadership of pushing the plan through without properly consulting the countries that make up the organisation. Its members have voted to boycott all Fifa competitions if the sale goes ahead.
The Asian Football Confederation and Concacaf, the governing body for North and Central America, have since joined Uefa in rejecting the proposal — leaving Infantino isolated against three of Fifa's six continental confederations at once.
To try to win over the federations still weighing the plan, Infantino has sweetened the offer: member associations who approve it would see guaranteed funding for the next four years double from $10 million to $20 million, with projected Fifa payouts through 2038 rising to roughly $86 million per federation, against about $36 million without the deal. Members have been told to decide by September 19.
The internal strain has already produced one high-profile departure. Carlos Cordeiro, a senior advisor to Infantino and a former US Soccer president, resigned from his role in protest at the plan — a rare public break from within Infantino's own camp.
Speculation has also turned to who might challenge Infantino when Fifa members next elect a president, in March 2027. Reports in recent days have named Paris Saint-Germain president Nasser Al-Khelaifi as a possible rival candidate, though he is said, so far, to be uninterested; Uefa officials are reported to be searching for a heavyweight figure willing to stand against him.
Infantino, first elected in 2016 after Sepp Blatter's resignation and re-elected in 2019 and 2023, has already confirmed at April's Fifa Congress in Vancouver that he intends to seek a further term in 2027. Under Fifa's statutes a president is limited to three four-year terms, but because his initial 2016-2019 stint completing Blatter's term is not counted as a full term, a win in 2027 would let him serve until 2031 before hitting that cap.
For now, more than 200 of Fifa's federations are reported to still be backing Infantino, and no formal move to remove him is on the table. But the scale of the Uefa-led revolt — and the prospect of Europe's teams sitting out Fifa events — makes this the most serious institutional crisis of his presidency, with the September 19 funding deadline and the build-up to September's Under-20 Women's World Cup in Poland the next flashpoints to watch.
