8/1/2026

The heat got too hot in the kitchen for FIFA President Gianni Infantino and just days after proposing privatizing part of the FIFA organizations in order to sell shares to private investors Inafantino pulled the the idea from moving forward.

Infantino faced tremendous backlash to the sudden deal with little transparency and many members of FIFA calling it a “backroom” deal trying to be forced through to enrich a few including Infantino.

FIFA released the following statement:

“The FIFA Forward Enterprise project was intended to provide a basis for further strengthening our FIFA Member Associations and our sport worldwide, especially in those countries where support is most needed. And more so, as we said from the outset, to do this only if a majority of the FIFA Member Associations were in support and always subject to a consultation process with them, the FIFA Council, the Confederations and wider stakeholders,” the statement read.

“Having listened carefully to all the views, it has become clear that the project has created divisions of a nature that, regardless of the level of support, are no longer in the interest of the objective set out in the first place.”

Infantino had tried to frame it as a great opportunity to assist the FIFA membership with each member receiving somewhere between 20-40 million dollars. However, the backlash was swift and severe with the UEFA, Concacaf and AFC rejecting the idea immediately with the Europeans taking it a step further saying all 55 members from the UEFA would boycott all World Cup FIFA events, both men and women.

For more on this story, Kari Anderson from Yahoo Sports has a terrific story you can read on this link.  

Photo Credit FIFA X Platform

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