If you listen carefully you may hear the drip-drip-drip of Gianni Infantino’s wax wings. Hitherto untouchable as Fifa president, the backlash against his secret plan to sell off a stake in the World Cup to private equity now leaves Infantino clinging to power.
Uefa and Concacaf have declared they have no confidence in his presidency, while some of his besuited Praetorian Guard in Zurich are reaching for their daggers. Chief operating officer Kevin Lamour went public on Friday, saying Infantino had deceived the Fifa administration by cooking up this plan in private.
To see all of these once-loyal subjects flee must be galling for Infantino, and it brings to mind the fall of the scheming farmer in Fr Ted, Fargo Boyle: he has lost the respect of his sheep, the ultimate indignity for a man who deals primarily with sheep.
Infantino has to be removed as a matter of urgency.
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It has emerged that this plan was in train before the 2026 World Cup began, so now we must consider the half-time show, the grotesque ticket prices, the hydration breaks, and the revoking of Cristiano Ronaldo’s suspension and ask: did we spend five weeks watching a football tournament or a prospectus for investors?
And while Infantino’s private equity plan has been rightly rejected on principle, lost amid the rejections were the sums of the thing. Infantino struck a truly terrible deal. He and JPMorgan valued control of all of Fifa’s competitions in perpetuity at $20 billion, yet the most recent men’s World Cup made $15 billion.
As the Financial Times points out, this puts football at roughly the same level the market values Formula One. How do we reconcile this modest valuation with Infantino’s description of the recent World Cup as “the greatest sporting, social and cultural event in humanity?”
Donald Trump has called Infantino the king of soccer but he is lately giving the impression he would rather be the game’s viceroy on behalf of vampiric American capitalism; content for his sport to surrender its sovereignty once he remains accredited with the lavish trappings and remuneration of office. (Though we can’t imagine many hard-nosed investors keeping faith for very long with the guy who showed such lamentable business sense in the first place.)
And yet Infantino still has a route to survival. The Qatari and Moroccan FAs have issued statements in support, while his power base in Africa and South America have so far refrained from any public sedition. With North America and Europe in rebellion, the Asian confederation is the swing state. Saudi Arabia, hosts of the 2034 World Cup, exercise considerable influence in this part of the world, so Infantino may yet have the numbers to survive a vote of no confidence.
And while Uefa’s heave against Infantino was stunning, it was somewhat restrained.
Having savaged a “shabby, back room, opaque deal”, called for a thorough review and said Infantino has lost their confidence, Uefa stopped short of triggering a formal vote of no confidence. Their statement also pointed out that Fifa are sitting on reserves of $5 billion, and so they could afford to dish out dazzling funds to members without needing to sell off to private equity in the first place.
Any potential candidate emerging to rival Infantino will take note of this as a potential price of Uefa support, but so will Infantino. Given his desperate desire to cling to power, his vestigial power base in the Global South and his shameless expediency, Infantino may yet survive by prostrating himself apologetically before Europe with open purse strings.
Though this scenario seems unlikely, nothing can be ruled out in a sport where the only governing principle is self-interest.
Regardless of whether Infantino stays or goes, it is galling to hear all of those who stood idly by for years now suddenly find their righteous voices.
Perhaps Infantino felt he could get away with the private equity plan because he has got away with all of his other machinations: the dismantling of reform committees and his contempt for the media; the parachuting of Messi’s Inter Miami into the Club World Cup and the revoking of Folarin Balogun’s suspension; the awarding of the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia and the Fifa Peace Prize to Donald Trump.
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That Infantino was allowed to get this far is indicative of a sport that is not fit to govern itself. Fifa, its confederations, and its member nations had the opportunity to build a structure to protect and enhance their sport after the FBI arrests and the corruption scandal that cleaned out the top of the organisation. Less than a decade later they came within a newspaper story of selling off a chunk of football at a knock-down price to a member of the Kushner family.
So while Infantino must go, nothing will change without vast structural reform. Football’s entire governance model is an archaic structure that has been rotted from the inside by a flood of money. It must be torn down and replaced with a system of genuine good governance and transparency and this must be regulated by an external agency.
For as long as Trump is in the White House, the only body with the power and credibility to do this is the European Union. The EU must end its hands-off approach and enact a sports law that polices Uefa, Fifa and all sports governing bodies in a manner similar to how the Digital Services Act oversees Google and Facebook.
Football will not be set right solely by the installation of some new, gurning blazer promising better, because you should remember the last Fifa president elected on a platform of transparency and reform – his name was Gianni Infantino.
