Kevin Lamour Leaves FIFA Amid Infantino's Turmoil
FIFA’s chief operating officer Kevin Lamour has left the organisation, deepening the turmoil around Gianni Infantino’s embattled presidency just weeks after he publicly attacked the president’s controversial commercial plan.
“FIFA can confirm that the working relationship between FIFA and Kevin Lamour as FIFA’s Chief Operating Officer has ended on 17 August 2026,” a spokesperson said late on Monday, adding only: “FIFA thanks Kevin for his two years of service and wishes him the best of luck for the future. No further comment will be made on the matter.”
No explanation. No detail. Just another senior figure out the door.
A close ally turns critic
Lamour’s exit stings because of who he is and how he got there. The French executive joined FIFA’s senior leadership in November 2024, but his relationship with Infantino goes back much further. He was part of the inner circle that helped drive Infantino’s successful campaign to become FIFA president in 2016, in the aftermath of Sepp Blatter’s resignation and the corruption scandal that tore through world football’s governing body.
Now, one of the original loyalists has broken ranks.
Last month, Lamour publicly condemned Infantino’s proposal to create a $20bn subsidiary and sell up to a 20 percent stake in FIFA’s commercial rights to private equity investors in a bid to raise $4.2bn. He accused the leadership of misleading staff over the project, calling it “the project of one person” and insisting that employees had been “deceived”.
“Our mission … is to serve football, not to serve the personal interests of a person who, unfortunately, believes he embodies FIFA when he is supposed to be at its service,” Lamour said.
Those remarks landed like a grenade at FIFA headquarters.
They also came hard on the heels of another high-profile departure. Carlos Cordeiro, a senior adviser to Infantino, resigned in protest against the same proposal, branding it “a bad deal for football”. Under mounting resistance, Infantino withdrew the plan later that day, but the backlash has not faded.
Re-election bid under siege
The fallout has spilled directly into Infantino’s attempt to secure a fourth term as FIFA president at elections scheduled for March next year. Once considered a formality, his re-election now looks anything but guaranteed.
The powerful European confederation UEFA, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) and CONCACAF, which oversees football in North and Central America and the Caribbean, are now aligned against the 56-year-old Swiss official. He still counts on strong backing from the African and South American confederations, but the old assumption of an unchallenged coronation has been shattered.
At the heart of the political storm lies a basic question: how many terms should one man be allowed to run world football?
Under FIFA’s rules, presidents are limited to three terms. Infantino, though, successfully argued in 2022 that his first spell in office from 2016 to 2019 should not count towards that cap because he was completing an interrupted mandate following Blatter’s resignation. That interpretation opened the door to a fourth term.
Now, that door is being slammed on.
Legal challenge to Infantino’s eligibility
On Monday, human rights in sport organisation FairSquare confirmed it had written to FIFA’s Governance, Audit and Compliance Committee (GACC), urging that Infantino be ruled ineligible to stand again.
“The complaint we have filed provides clear evidence that this is a clear breach of the rules and one that sets a very dangerous precedent,” FairSquare director Nicholas McGeehan told Reuters. “The rules state clearly that three presidential terms is the maximum allowed. FIFA can’t simply circumvent this rule – which serves as a check on presidential power – by saying that his first term doesn’t count.”
FIFA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FairSquare’s letter was drafted with the help of Miguel Maduro, the former head of FIFA’s independent Governance and Review Committee, a key figure in the reforms introduced in 2016 after the Blatter era.
Maduro was blunt in his assessment. He argued that the principle of term limits was a cornerstone of those reforms and that the rule is “clear: no FIFA President can serve more than three terms of office”. Trying to carve out a special exemption for Infantino, he warned, exposes “a resistance to the principle of term limits” and shows that some within FIFA see rules “not as rules but as obstacles to be circumvented”.
This is no minor technical dispute. It strikes at the credibility of the reform package that was supposed to clean up FIFA’s governance after years of scandal.
Confederations turn up the heat
The legal pressure from FairSquare lands at a time when Infantino is also facing coordinated political resistance.
Last week, UEFA, the AFC and CONCACAF jointly called for an independent review of his conduct. According to sources with knowledge of the situation, the three confederations view the move as a way to offer Infantino an exit route that would allow him to step down with his dignity intact, rather than be forced out in a bruising election battle.
For a president who once enjoyed near-total control of the FIFA Congress, that kind of language is ominous.
The fractures are now clear: Europe, Asia and North/Central America on one side; Africa and South America on the other. The question is whether Infantino can still marshal enough votes from his remaining allies to ride out the storm, or whether the drip of resignations and formal complaints will turn into a flood.
A presidency under scrutiny
Infantino’s tenure has already been the subject of scrutiny beyond football. FairSquare recently filed a complaint to the International Olympic Committee, accusing him of breaching the IOC’s rules on political neutrality because of his support for United States President Donald Trump. The IOC rejected that complaint last month. Infantino has been an IOC member since 2020.
Even so, the perception that he is willing to push the boundaries of rules and norms has fed unease among some stakeholders in the game.
Now comes the latest rupture: the departure of Kevin Lamour, a man who helped put Infantino in power and then turned against the direction of his presidency.
The commercial plan has been shelved. The internal dissent has gone public. The legal challenges are on the table. The confederations are choosing sides.
For Gianni Infantino, the next few months will not just decide whether he wins another term. They may decide how his entire era at FIFA is ultimately judged.
